Banner for the exhibition.
An exhibition of modern art titled YBA & BEYOND: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection is currently being held at the National Art Center Tokyo (NACT). It is a collaboration between NACT and the renowned Tate cultural institution that operates four major art museums in the United Kingdom.
YBAs stand for Young British Artists. It was a designation given by an art historian within an art magazine to a group of young artists who were challenging existing norms in the late 1980s and 90s. The second part of the title, "& BEYOND," identifies artists that influenced the YBAs, and YBA contemporaries who operated outside of the YBA circle, or who did not choose to identify with the YBA designation.
The opening of the exhibition was attended by Gregor Muir, Director of Collection, International Art at Tate, Helen Little, Curator, Contemporary Art at Tate Britain, and Ted McDonald-Toone, Head of International Partnerships. All three spoke to JAPAN Forward at length. Gregor Muir is one of the most influential figures in London's art scene and is widely recognized as the foremost chronicler of the YBA movement.
Thatcher's Britain
The 1980s were a transitional time for Britain. A conservative government headed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979. It unapologetically sought reform. The economy boomed in the middle of the decade, before a late 1980s bust. Mid-decade economic growth, however, was unevenly distributed, leading to considerable social tension based on class, race, and regionalism.
Additionally, gentrification occurred, uprooting innumerable working-class neighborhoods. The industrial base was hollowed out in favor of a service-driven economy, resulting in abandoned factories and warehouses. Feminism continued its advance, and the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic brought the issue of LGBTQ rights to the fore.
Freedom to Create
The late 80s downturn proved a boon for the generation of emerging artists who have come to be known as the YBAs. Rather than wait for approval from a commercial art scene that Helen Little characterizes as "conservative" and "resistant to change," the YBAs hosted exhibitions of their own work in the derelict warehouses. The most significant was Freeze, an 1988 exhibition curated by Damien Hirst.
Art produced by the YBAs was driven by a wide range of contemporary social forces. They worked with a "completely fresh attitude," states Little, "with new subjects and materials, all with an emphasis on reality and lived experiences."
"Very little of the artwork was painting," adds Ted McDonald-Toone. "Some of it was photography, there was a lot of video, a lot of sculptural installations, and a lot of art that involves performance. The sculpture was sculptural in ways that had never been seen before."
In YBA & BEYOND, the broad range of artwork spans from 1988 to 2003. It is arranged within themes that include the urban environment, medicine, subculture, and personal spaces. There are 74 works in total.
Aids and Arrivals
During the 1980s, there was no more pressing issue than the Aids epidemic, which was disproportionately present within the male homosexual community. The painting, Ataxia – Aids is Fun, by Derek Jarman, was painted while he suffered from full-blown AIDS and Ataxia, a neurological disease that impacts the nervous system.
There is dark humor in the painting's title. Much of the artwork was finger-painted by Jarman while he was going blind. It was completed in 1993, seven months before he died. As the scourge of AIDS-related death has been largely overcome, the painting stands as a monument to a cruel disease during a troubled time.
Video Artwork
Another artwork specific to the 1990s is Threshold to the Kingdom, a video presentation completed by Mark Wallinger in 2000. The color video consists of slow-motion footage of people coming through the arrivals doorway at London City Airport. It is shot in a single take from a camera on a tripod. The visual images are soundtracked by Miserere (Latin for "have mercy"), a well-known piece of choral music by the Italian composer Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652).
It is "primarily about thresholds and borders," states McDonald-Toone, and "about who is included." Gregor Muir adds that through the choral music and slow motion, there is a sense of the arrivals gate being the pearly gates that comprise the entrance to heaven.
Threshold to the Kingdom is very much of the pre-September 11, 2001 era. "You could never stand outside the arrivals gate at London City Airport and make a film like this today," advises Muir. Airport security is immeasurably more strict.
Other visual imagery that dates the video includes a smoker and a man carrying a cup of tea in a ceramic cup and saucer, rather than a disposable or plastic cup. No matter the form of delivery, however, there is no more appropriate welcome for a Briton into heaven than a cup of tea, Muir joked.
Explosions and Questions of Racial Identity
One of the more striking artworks is Cold Matter: An Exploded View, in which Cornelia Parker had the British army blow up a garden shed. The contents were then suspended from the ceiling as if held mid-explosion.
The 1980s were the era of The Troubles, when the Irish Republican Army carried out a series of bombings within Britain. Additionally, explains Parker, the imagery of explosion is something of which society is constantly bombarded, "from the violence of the comic strip, through action films, in documentaries about Super Novas and the Big Bang, and least of all on the news in never-ending reports of war."
However, rather than depicting violence in public spaces, she chose a deeply personal space: a shed. "In British culture", explains McDonald-Toone, "the shed, often for men, is a retreat, or a place where you keep things which you can't quite throw out. But these things have memories." Parker gives the discarded domestic appliances, sporting equipment, and household effects new life by transforming them. "This artwork really changed the boundaries of what you can do with sculpture," concludes McDonald-Toone.
(4) An explosion of personal effects: Installation view of the exhibition "YBA&BEYOND: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection." The National Art Center, Tokyo, 2026 (Photo ©Paul de Vries)
A Colonial Past
The most recent artwork in the exhibition is Union Black, created in 2003. In 1997, a progressive government headed by a youthful Tony Blair ushered in a new sense of optimism. The term "Cool Britannia" was coined.
By juxtaposing an iconic symbol of British nationalism with the red, black, and green colors of the Pan-African movement, Union Black seeks to remind Tony Blair's Britain of an unresolved colonial past, as well as the lived experience of colored minority communities.
1980s Parallels Between Britain and Japan
There are many similarities between the experiences of Britain and Japan during the 1980s and 90s. Both enjoyed a decade of enormous economic growth in the 1980s before enduring a financial crisis in the early 1990s. In both countries, the era was accompanied by great social change.
When NACT recently jointly curated an exhibition of modern art produced in Japan with the M+ gallery of Hong Kong, 1989 was unsurprisingly chosen as the starting date. Japan is thereby "the ideal location for this exhibition," stated Helen Little.
Could a new generation rise up in the mode of the YBAs? "The opportunities that artists had in the 1990s are not really here anymore," cautions Little. The YBAs "had access to really innovative art education that they didn't have to pay for," in addition to venues in the derelict parts of the city. "In this sense, it was something of a golden age."
However, the supportive infrastructure of the artist rose with the YBAs themselves. Galleries opened, and interest in modern art by collectors grew. This foundation could actually be said to include the Tate Modern, the gallery within the Tate cultural institution that is dedicated to modern art. The Tate Modern opened its doors in 2000.
"Without the YBAs, Tate Modern might not have come into being," suggests Little. The prominence of the YBAs led London to believe that it needed a new museum of modern art.
YBA & BEYOND: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection can be seen at the National Art Center Tokyo until May 11. It will then move to Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art from June 3 to September 6.
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Author: Paul de Vries
