Art in Ruins

Art in Ruins, Sans Frontieres Global Rucksack, 1991. (Source)

Art in Ruins was formed in 1984 as a collaborative interventionist practice in art and architecture, staging exhibitions and publishing texts, by Hannah Vowles and Glyn Banks.

Art in Ruins, based in Bloomsbury, London, uses 1960s conceptual art strategies utilized by Art & Language and Gilbert and George. Works include Trust Us (1997) and We Like You (1995). Their reaction to current art is "iconoclastic" with "a sort of supersensitivity to the politics of art." They curated the exhibition Our Wonderful Culture (St George's Crypt, Bloomsbury 1995) and collaborated with Stewart Home, Ed Baxter, and others on Ruins of Glamour, Glamour of Ruins (Chisenhale Gallery 1986) and Desire in Ruins (Transmission Gallery, Glasgow 1987).

Since the early 1990s, Art in Ruins have been satirising self-expression and focusing on art's economic basis. Like General Idea and Group Material, Art in Ruins may be a group "but they are first and foremost a demolition squad whose target is the last vestiges of value........more than a name" Art in Ruins "is a whole programme."

Their work has been exhibited throughout Europe. They were Visiting Professors at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. In 1991, Art in Ruins were awarded the DAAD Künstlerprogramm Berlin Stipendium. An exhibition concerning Third World Debt and migration entitled Conceptual Debt was shown at the DAAD Galerie Berlin followed by the discursive event on art activism trap with Stephan Geene and Büro Bert at KunstWerke Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin in 1993.

Art in Ruins has been in limbo since 2001. This "silence" is the subject of an artist's project and it has also been the subject of two editions of Wavelength arts programme on the community radio station Resonance FM.

Art in Ruins themselves have said: "it may be that it is our extremely visible failure to be indexed in the recent history of the dominant culture that is our greatest success." (2019)

Publications

• "Style Wars", Studio International 1003, Jan 1984. Book review.

• "Mulheimer Freiheit: The Return of the Living Dead", Art Monthly 73, Feb 1984, pp 22-23, PDF. Exh. review.

• "The Anti-Aesthetic Essays on Postmodern Culture", Studio International 198:1009, Jul 1985, PDF. Book review.

• "The Site of Ruined Intentions: Les Immatériaux", Studio International 198:1009, Jul 1985, PDF. Exh. review.

• "Try Another World", Art Monthly 80/81, London, Oct/Nov 1984; repr., Real Life Magazine 13, New York, Winter 1984; repr. in Lies in Ruins, London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1986, PDF.

• "Zone of Anxiety; A Question of Post-Modernity", Studio International 98:1010, Oct/Nov 1985.

• "Our Wonderful Culture", Performance 40, Mar/Apr 1986, p 37, PDF. [1]

• Ruins of Glamour, Glamour of Ruins, catalogue text, London: Unpopular Books, 1986. [2]

• Desire in Ruins, catalogue text, Glasgow: Transmission, May 1987, PDF. Exh. leaflet.

• Die Grosse Oper, catalogue text, Kunstvereine Bonn and Frankfurt, 1987.

• New Realism: From the Museum of Ruined Intentions, catalogue text, London: Gimpel Fils, 1987. [3]

• Des émblèmes comme attitudes, catalogue text, Tourcoing: Ecole des Beaux Arts, 1988.

• "One (Art) World (Market)", Alba 12, Scotland, Summer 1989. Review.

• D&S Ausstellung, catalogue text, Hamburg: Kunstverein Hamburg, 1989.

• "Romantic Consumerism", Building Design 962, 17 Nov 1989, p 38, PDF. Exh. review.

• "Cities of the Dead", Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 13:3, 1989, pp 63-72.

• "Vacant Possession Building", Building Design, 16 Nov 1990. Exh. review. [4]

• Recent History, catalogue text, Canterbury, UK: Herbert Read Gallery, May 1991. Exh. brochure. Curated by Art in Ruins.

• "Menace of the Absolute: Technological Fascism versus Ecological Realism", Building Design 1030, 12 Apr 1991; repr. as "How to Explain Western Civilisation to a Dead Hare: Technological Fascism versus Ecological Realism", catalogue text, in Krieg. Österreichische Triennale zur Fotografie 1993, Graz: Edition Camera Austria, 1993, pp 100-105, PDF.
  • "Wie man einem toten Hasen die westliche Zivilisation erklärt: Technologischer Faschismus gegen ökologischen Realismus", catalogue text, in Krieg. Österreichische Triennale zur Fotografie 1993, Graz: Edition Camera Austria, 1993, pp 74-81. (German)

• "Appearances are Against Us" / "Der Augenschein spricht gegen uns", trans. Wilfried Prantner, Camera Austria 47/48, 1994, pp 3-15, PDF.

Interviews

• "Art in Ruins", Kunstforum International 106: "Künstlerpaare vol. 1", ed. Paolo Bianchi, March/April 1990. [5] (German)

• Peter Funken, "Vampire der Vampire. Art in Ruins", Zitty 14, Berlin, 1992.

Literature

• Malcolm Dickson, "White Trash: Art in Ruins", Variant 3, Autumn 1987.

• "Zwischen Formen. Gemeinschaftsproduktionen in der aktuellen Kunst" [Between Forms: Collaborative productions in contemporary art], Wolkenkratzer Art Journal 6, 1989, pp 22-34. Exh. review of D&S Ausstellung. [6]

• Brian Hatton, "Art in Ruins", Artforum, Mar 1989. Exh. review.

• Michael Corris, "New Work: Art in Ruins", Artforum, Sep 1991. Exh. review of Gimpel Fils.

• Frank Perrin, "European Guerillas: Portrait of Artists with Groups", Kanal 2, Paris, Apr/May 1992, pp 14-17. [7] (French)/(English)

• Alex Coles, "Art in Ruins", artext 69, 1999. Exh. review.

• Nic Clear, "Recent History - Art In Ruins", Architectural Design 79:5, 2009, pp 92-95. [8]

• Eva Weinmayr, (pause) 21 scenes concerning the silence of Art in Ruins, London: Occasional Papers, 2010, 72 pp. Based on interviews with Emma Dexter, David Thorp, James Lingwood, Stewart Home, Douglas Park, Robin Klassnik, Thomas Wulffen, Justin Hofman, Ingeborg Wiensowski, Stefan Szelkun, Ed Baxter, Vera Büchlmann, Christoph Tannert. Publisher. Book video. Author.

• Eva Weinmayr (ed.), Art in Ruins and Unknown Stranger, London 1994: An Unpublished Project for Frieze, London: Occasional Papers, and FormContent, 2010, 20 pp. Publisher. Author.

• Birgit Eusterschulte, "Un/Mögliche Funktionalisierungen oder Die Fallen des Ausstellens", Kongressakte des X. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Ästhetik, 2018. (German)

Links

• Website

• trap, 1993, [9] [10]

• debttrapkunstpraxis.net (archived)

• Art in Ruins on Bookworks.org.uk

• Eva Weinmayr, I Wonder what The Silene Was About, 2010. On the vanishing of the collective Art in Ruins. Exhibition.