English artist collective
Leeds 13 was an English artist collective.
The group formed in 1997–1998 at the University of Leeds, West Yorkshire.
All thirteen third-year students taking the four-year BA (Fine Art) were members: nine women and four men.
Their degree had two parts, marked with equal weight: art history and theory, and studio practice.
In studio practice, each student was expected to produce original artwork
for an end-of-year exhibition.
Members of Leeds 13 rejected this convention.
Instead, they cooperated on two conceptual works and unusual exhibitions.
These proved controversial but received top grades.
Going Places (1998) provoked public debate on activities acceptable as contemporary art.
Leeds 13's members pretended to take a week's holiday on the Spanish Costa del Sol (English: Sun Coast),
an activity generally thought of as leisure.
But the students said it was work: they had made art and the exhibition through their trip.
The holiday story matched the popular stereotype of art students as lazy and irresponsible.
Many UK mass media organisations ran the story without checking if it was true.
A few days later, the group revealed the holiday was an elaborate simulation
bringing the media response to a frenzy.
Leeds 13's members all received first class for their third year.
The Degree Show (1999) examined the art world: exhibitions and relationships between both works and stakeholders.
The group curated a corporate-style art exhibition.
They showed a diverse collection of work by other artists worth a total of £1 million.
The media and art critics objected to a final-year exhibition without any original work by the student artists.
But the examiners supported the concept: exhibition as a group artwork.
All the members of Leeds 13 graduated with first class degrees,
and most continued working together until mid-2000.
Leeds 13 was
"... trying to counter the traditional notion of the artist as an individual creator of specific objects.",
according to the artist's statement for The Degree Show.[3]
In contrast, they worked as a group producing one-off events that defied the art market.
Going Places has continued to attract interest for pushing the boundaries in contemporary art and as a well-executed media hoax.
Going Places (1998)
All thirteen third-year fine art students at the University of Leeds
began the 1997–1998 academic year working as individuals.
But they formed a collective for studio practice,
according to a press release attributed to their tutor and artist Terry Atkinson.[4]
The group consisted of nine women and four men.[5][6]
Concept
The project brief was "come up with something thought-provoking",[7]
according to Martin Wainwright in The Guardian newspaper.
The students were interested in popular preconceptions about art,
particularly activities acceptable as art and those that were not.[8]
They decided to produce a work with an activity not generally accepted as art,[9]
and then manipulate the media into distributing the work to the public.[10]
To be newsworthy, it had to be controversial.[11]
Deceiving donors and then journalists was essential to the plan.
They would pitch an art exhibition asking for money to mount the show.
Later, journalists would be told that the donations had been spent on a week-long package holiday to the Costa del Sol.
The students would say they had made art and the exhibition out of themselves and their trip.[8][12]
Finally, the reality would be revealed: the holiday had been a simulation and the donations had not been spent.[13]
If the work provoked public debate on the nature of art then the students would consider it a success,
and they called their project Going Places.[8]
Preparation
The students applied to their representative body, Leeds University Union, for money to mount an exhibition and were granted £1,126.[14][15]
The only business sponsor identified by the media was the owner of a Leeds art shop who donated £50.[12][16]
Evidence for the holiday included a performance art event, stories, props and suntans.
The group's supposed arrival back from Spain would be staged at the local international airport for invited guests.[13][9]
The students convinced the authorities to simulate a flight from Málaga on the announcement boards and then let them exit arrivals.[6] A prelude in an art space would gather the guests and set the Spanish theme before the event at the airport.[13]
The group would claim to have spent six days swimming, sunbathing and enjoying the nightlife on the Mediterranean coast.[17][18]
They forged airline tickets, baggage labels and a postcard
apparently sent from Spain to their tutor.[4]
Spanish-themed props were collected to use as souvenirs and add local colour to a set of photographs
supposedly taken on their holiday.[13][9]
Beach shots were actually taken on the North Sea coast at Cayton Sands,[7] Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
Pool shots were taken at a private open-air swimming pool in Chapel Allerton, Leeds.
A blue lens filter gave the water and sky a Mediterranean look.[10]
Other backdrops included Leeds bars and a wall mural, that reminded the students of Gaudí,
at a Spanish-themed nightclub in Cayton Bay.[7]
In the week before the event, the group hid in their student accommodation
and used a suntanning bed and fake tan.[13]
They built up a skin tone that they later critiqued as "... (perhaps a shade too orange) ...", in the Going Places artist's statement published by The Guardian.[19][20]
Holiday and response
On the evening of 6 May 1998,[9]
around 60 guests,[17] including Atkinson and the head of the department Ken Hay,[11] arrived at
East Street Studios, Leeds.[9]
They found recorded flamenco music playing and sangria to drink but no artwork or students.
After half an hour, an air stewardess appeared and
led the guests to a bus that took them to Leeds Bradford Airport.[13]
There they saw the students arriving back from their holiday.[10][13]
The students invited the guests to the airport bar and after a couple of hours paid the bill with the last of the donations.[17][21]
The holiday story spread across campus to the Leeds Student newspaper
that interviewed members of the group.[13][9]
On Friday 15 May, Leeds Student ran "Con Artists' Spanish Rip-Off" on the front page
and continued inside with "And They Call This Art?"[8]
Two days later, the national Sunday Mirror newspaper picked up the story.[12]
Regional newspapers the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post followed on Monday.[11][16]
On Tuesday 19 May, when the hoax was revealed, the holiday story was covered on television, radio and,[13]
in national morning newspapers including the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Times.[21][22][17][18][5]
Newspapers covered objections from the donors to misuse of their money and support for Going Places as art from the students and their tutor.
The group told The Daily Telegraph they aimed
"... to force people to discuss whether there was any limit on what could be described as art."
They continued explaining the holiday with
"This is leisure as art." and "It is art and it was an exhibition."[17]
Atkinson said
"It was quite a coup de théâtre.
They were lucky because the plane could have been 12 hours late." to the Yorkshire Post.[11]
And he told The Times "It's definitely art, but whether it's good or bad art is another thing."[15]
A university spokesman was neutral on what the students had done but
positive about the value for money they had achieved.[17]
Some newspapers also ran opinion pieces on the Going Places holiday story as art.
Leeds Student said it was neither creative nor original because millions of people take package holidays every year.[14]
Using the group as the latest example, the Yorkshire Evening Post condemned modern artists as more skilled at self-promotion than making art objects.[23]
The Daily Telegraph contrasted Atkinson's opinion with those of two art critics.
Brian Sewell did not accept Going Places as art.
Richard Dorment said "This is not a good work of art. It seems to me on the edge of being a hoax and quite a good joke. I think the joke wins."[17]
The students planned to replace the holiday story with the hoax reality
in the next issue of Leeds Student,[15]
on 5 June.[24]
But they "... decided to confess early when the issue became 'very hot'.", according to Damien Whitworth in The Times.[15]
Hoax and response
On Tuesday 19 May 1998, a member of the group appeared on the BBC Radio 4
morning news and current-affairs programme Today.
He revealed the holiday was a simulation and the donations had not been spent.[10][13]
Later that day, the Yorkshire Evening Post checked the facts about the group's arrival
with a manager at the airport.
This confirmed that the arrival was staged and the holiday story was actually a hoax.[6]
The next day, most newspapers focused on the donations and deceptions.
The group considered repaying the money or donating it to charity.[7][25]
They decided to pay the grant back to Leeds University Union.
However, the union demanded a letter of apology to the city's students for publication in Leeds Student.
The group's members refused so were banned from their student representative body.[24]
Reports on the amount of sponsorship varied from £400 through £600 to £800.[6][26][7]
The true amount and what the group did with it are not known.
Some print media also asked whether the Going Places hoax was art.
Most commentators thought it was.
One exception was journalist Cosmo Landesman who interviewed the students for The Sunday Times newspaper.
In his opinion, an artwork was something that could be viewed or bought
and was produced by an individual artist.[27]
So Going Places was not art.
The group disagreed with this and other aspects of Landesman's piece saying he had missed the point.[19][10]
Opinions on whether Going Places was good or interesting art were mixed.
Atkinson thought it was good because it raised issues including
the activities acceptable as art and the way media organisations fed off each other.[28]
Hay told The Guardian that "[The students] have got everyone talking about the very things—the nature of art and its relationship with life—that lie at the heart of the course."[7]
In the same piece, art critic Adrian Searle wrote leisure was an original subject and
Going Places was a fantastic work that played with preconceptions.[7]
At the end of May, The Times Higher Education Supplement published
"Talented Artists or Just Con Artists?"
As well as Atkinson and Hay, the article quoted artist and tutor John Stezaker
who found the fictional trip interesting and deserving of the top grade.
However, two lecturers at other institutions said Going Places was not good or interesting art.
One said it only showed the mutual dependence of art and media.
The other contrasted the group's barefaced lying about Going Places to
Duchamp's ambiguity about whether his conceptual works were sincere.
Both lecturers had concerns about the negative effects of the deceptions
on those who had been hoaxed and on the reputation of artists.[28]
In July, the group's members all received first class for their third year.
According to a BBC News report, "Examiners praised them for challenging popular perceptions about how art is produced, taught and criticised."[29]
Leeds 13's place in art history was explored by curator Ralph Rugoff in the September-October edition of Frieze magazine.
He was the first commentator to use the name Leeds 13 in print.
Rugoff wrote that Going Places was a "... perfectly executed double whammy."
It had provoked public debate on the nature of art but Rugoff did not think the results had been illuminating.
More interesting was that in distributing news of the work the media had added new facets to it.
In Rugoff's view, Leeds 13, and contemporaries Decima Gallery, were the first artists to make the media their principal medium.
He labelled them Neo-Publicists.[30]
Going Places and its "... media frenzy ..." ended the year among the
news highlights of 1998 picked by Claire Sanders for The Times Higher Education Supplement.[31]
Exhibitions
In the Going Places artist's statement, the students wrote "We have produced no tangible end object for market, ..."[20]
One member of the group explained the art was the impression that the work had left in people's minds.[28]
Despite this, Going Places was featured in two art exhibitions.
Go Away: Artists and Travel at the Royal College of Art (RCA) Galleries, London ran from 17 April to 6 May 1999.
Mounted by RCA students on the MA (Visual Arts Administration),
the exhibition included works by over thirty artists.
Leeds 13 showed Going Places holiday photographs, ephemera and a video of the project's television coverage.[2]
f.k.a.a. (formerly known as art) at The Wardrobe, Leeds ran 16–18 March 2000 and featured work by local artists.[32]
The members of Leeds 13, who all graduated the previous year,
showed a collection of Going Places items wrapped and priced.
These included a bikini top for £69.96, Frisbee for £110, men's shorts for £80,000 and the holiday photographs in an album for £13 million.
A member of the group explained to the Yorkshire Post "It's not really a finished project, it's a processing of the items, that they themselves have become legitimate as art."[33]
In his review of the exhibition for The Guardian,
Wainwright credited Leeds 13's zest with attracting others to revitalise the visual arts in Leeds.
But he also noted concerns that the group's critique of the art market and its prices was becoming ridiculous.[32]
The Degree Show (1999)
For the fourth and final year of their degree, two new members joined Leeds 13
but one existing member dropped out.[20][34]
Concept
The students were interested in art exhibitions and two types of relationships in the art world.
First, the relationships between works of art that gave each one its significance relative to others.
Second, the relationships between art world stakeholders including artists and private sector patrons.
They decided to curate a corporate-style exhibition. The show would feature a diverse collection of existing works by other artists as "... conceptual props, ...",
according to the artist's statement later published in The Times Higher Education Supplement.[3]
They would present the exhibition as a group artwork and call their project The Degree Show.[35]
Preparation
Leeds 13 gained corporate and local business sponsorship for the exhibition.[36]
Property developer Hammerson hosted the show in West Riding House, Leeds.[35]
The works, worth a total of £1 million,[37][38]
were by over thirty artists. They included
sculpture by Duchamp and Barbara Hepworth, bronze by Rodin and Henry Moore, paintings by David Shepherd and Damien Hirst, collage by Kurt Schwitters, a poster by Jeff Koons, photographs by Jo Spence, the BANK fax-back service and performance by Decima Gallery.[36]
Leeds 13 hung, lit and secured the work.
They also created the catalogue, wall labels and advertising.[3]
The introductory essay was a collage of art writing.
It explained the concept with "As Hugh McDiarmid said 'the greater the plagiarism the greater the work of art.'
If we can accept this dissident posture we can take this exhibition as a work of art in itself."[36]
Response
The Degree Show was open to the public 8–18 June 1999.[36]
Leeds 13's tutor and art historian Ben Read told The Times that students normally showed original work.
He continued by asking "Have they made these works their own art?"
Read concluded that the exhibition had stimulated debate on the nature of art.[39]
The show was covered in the regional and quality newspapers that had been hoaxed by Going Places.
As the students had not produced original artworks for a second year,
questions were asked about what they had been doing.[40][38]
The response to The Degree Show as a group artwork was negative.
An art and philosophy lecturer wrote that the work was not good art.
In his view, the show failed to critique corporate art exhibitions
because it looked exactly like one.[41]
Two art critics were quoted in both The Guardian and The Times.
Matthew Collings dismissed The Degree Show as "... appropriation art, trendy but moronic."
David Lee said it "... confirms the important point that the path to success in modern art is through notoriety. It sounds like a complete abrogation of responsibility as a degree show."[37][39]
In contrast, the response to The Degree Show as an exhibition was positive.
According to a Leeds gallery owner, who lent £140,000 worth of bronze, the mounting of the show was excellent.[37]
She also appreciated the selection of work by artists with Leeds connections: Hepworth, Hirst and Moore.[42]
Shepherd, who exhibited two paintings, said the show was a good opportunity for the public to view a diverse collection of work.[37]
And Read noted it had more visitors than any of the department's previous exhibitions.[39]
Leeds 13's fourteen members received upper second class for The Degree Show, the studio practice half of their marks.[43]
This was added to their individual marks for art history and theory.
The day after the show opened, the students received six first and eight upper second class degrees.[34]
But seven students appealed saying the examiners had rushed marking The Degree Show to take industrial action.
Their appeal was successful, and in September they all received first class degrees.[43]
After graduation (late 1999–2000)
The Henry Moore Foundation asked artist Jeanne van Heeswijk to organise an investigation of Leeds's cultural life.
Between 18 November and 18 December 1999, artists worked with members of the public on the project called A Christmas Pudding for Henry.[44]
Van Heeswijk's website listed Leeds 13 as participants.[45]
According to the group's official website,
they produced Floiner (1999) a video work about an imaginary local artist.[46]
In March 2000, Leeds 13 revisited Going Places at the f.k.a.a. exhibition.[32][33]
By May, eleven Leeds 13 members were artists-in-residence at the
Batofar cultural centre and restaurant, Paris.
The group staged playful interventions in formal spaces including
the Louvre and the National Library.[1]
Near the Batofar was
the Bibliothèque nationale de France (English: National Library of France)
François-Mitterrand
enclosing a forest garden that the public could view but not enter.[47]
According to their official website, Leeds 13 critiqued the library's inaccessible green space
with A Play on Grass (2000).
They built a temporary public park with models of the library's towers
around a five-a-side football pitch.[48]
As of 2024[update], A Play on Grass remains Leeds 13's most recent work, according to their official website.[49]
Continuing response
A BBC Introduction to Modern and Contemporary Art by Paul Glinkowski was published in 2000.
Glinkowski wrote that Going Places was "... possibly the most outrageous game in British art history."
He categorised the work as challenging both the rules and the rulers of the art world.[50]
Going Places was the first example of simulation in art critic John A. Walker's book Art in the Age of the Mass Media (3rd ed.), published in 2001.
Walker wrote the project was a prank by young artists to pay the media back for their barbed coverage of contemporary art.
He mentioned The Degree Show in passing.
Walker suggested alternative careers for the by-then-graduate artists: public relations or journalism.[51]
In 2009, RTÉ Radio 1 broadcast Grand Art in The Curious Ear series of documentaries.
It revisited two performance artworks costing about £1,000 from the late 1990s
with Going Places as the second work.
A member of Leeds 13 explained how the work unfolded from the event guest and public's point of view
then covered how it was produced.[13]
Beating the Bounds was a 2013 Reith Lecture given by artist Grayson Perry on BBC Radio 4.
It examined the idea that anything could be art using Going Places as an example.
Perry hoped the work was a parody of that idea.[52]
In 2022, Vice Media published How We Conned the British Press a podcast on Going Places.
Two Leeds 13 members explained how the work was produced and gave examples of the media response.
The podcast also featured Wainwright, who covered the group for The Guardian,
and he commented on Going Places from the media's point of view.
Wainwright said the holiday and hoax stories were both entertaining
and Going Places was one of history's famous hoaxes.[10]
