Their brilliant careers - British art, various artists, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas

Art in America, April, 1996 by Lynn MacRitchie

All 22 of the "Brilliant" artists have been trained to postgraduate level at the leading London art colleges. Fifteen are alumni of Goldsmiths' College, where the theoretical program supervised by Michael Craig-Martin encourages students to take a questioning approach to art history and the social position of the artist. Used to taking nothing on trust, these young artists expect to make their own way, define their own values. While this has produced powerful individual pieces of work, the exhibition as a whole does not clearly demonstrate that the artists as a group are yet a force to be reckoned with.

In this regard, the artists have been ill-served by the "Exhibition Publication," as it coyly refers to itself. While "London: The New Scene" had a sober catalogue recording the exhibited works, no such documentation exists for "Brilliant." It is preserved only in a tabloid-style quasi-fanzine with a look and language long since vanished from the London club scene whose ambience it was presumably intended to capture. This too-close identification with a passing mood and moment does not assist in a serious assessment of the work.

Concentrating on the supposedly hip also obscures the deep seriousness with which these artists and their contemporaries in London approach the whole question of art. For however much they might try to disguise it--and an offhand "oh that, it's just something I did one day when I was bored" approach is a favorite evasive tactic when discussing their work--these are committed artists. Exposure to a wider audience in locations such as the Walker will continue the process of testing which in the end determines whether these art works will have validity in the years to come.

(1) Those selected by the British Council's visual Arts Department staff to show at the Scuola di San Pasquale in Venice were Fiona Banner, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Adam Chodzko, Matthew Dalziel and Louise Wilson, Ceal Floyer, Tom Gidley, Douglas Gordon, Gary Hume, Jaki Irvine, Jane and Louise Wilson, Elizabeth Wright and Cerith wyn Evans. Of these, only the Chapman brothers, Chodzko and Hume were among the 22 artists chosen for Minneapolis.