Group Material

"Group Material was founded by a number of artists who sought a collaborative practice in which they could fuse their interests in art and politics. The original thirteen members included Tim Rollins, Patrick Brennan, Julie Ault, Mundy McLaughlin, Marybeth Nelson, and Beth Jaker. In 1980 and 1981 Group Material operated a storefront exhibition space on East Thirteenth Street, New York, where it staged a series of shows focused on social themes. After 1981 the group shrunk to three members and chose not to maintain its own space but instead to create installations in existing venues (alternative art spaces, university galleries, and museums) and multiform projects in public (primarily through interventions using public advertising spaces). Doug Ashford joined the group in 1982, Felix Gonzalez-Torres in 1987, Karen Ramspacher in 1989, and Thomas Eggerer and Jochen Klein in 1995. Group Material's dense installations were typically thematic and combined fine art in various media and styles, mass-produced items, and artifacts to form designed environments. These exhibitions were concerned with topical issues or debates in culture and politics and were institution- or site-dependent, such as Subculture on the IRT subway trains in 1982; Democracy at the Dia Art Foundation in 1988; and AIDS Timeline at the University Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley, in 1989. Group Material ceased its activities in 1996." (2002)

Publications

• Group Material. Arts and Leisure, New York, 1986.

• Group Material. Constitution, Philadelphia, PA: Temple Gallery, 1987.

• Group Material, "Resistance: Anti-Baudrillard, roundtable discussion", File Magazine 28, part 1, 1987, pp 109-119.

• Group Material: Inserts, New York Times Advertisement Supplement, 1988. [1]

• Critical Art Ensemble, "Group Material, An Interview", Art Papers, Sep-Oct 1988, pp 23-29.

• William Olander, "Material World", Art in America 167, Jan 1989, pp 123-128, 167.

• Democracy: A Project by Group Material, ed. Brian Wallis, Seattle: Bay Press (Discussions in Contemporary Culture #5), and New York: Dia Art Foundation, 1990, 334 pp. Discusses the notion of democracy within the fields of cultural participation, politics and election, education, and AIDS. Texts by Noam Chomsky, David Deitcher, Lisa Duggen, Barbara Ehrenreich, Stuart Ewen, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., bell hooks, Gary Indiana, Catherine Lord, Yvonne Rainer, and others. Exhibition. Publisher. Essay: Kirsten Mairead Gill.
  • David Deitcher, "Social Aesthetics", pp 12-43. [2]

• Group Material/MATRIX 111 AIDS Timeline, Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1990, 10 pp.

• "Group Material", in Trevor J. Fairbrother, Kathryn Potts, In and Out of Place: Contemporary Art and the American Social Landscape, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993, pp 40-47.

• Group Material. Market, Munich: Kunstverein München, 1995.

• Jan Avgikos, "Group Material Timeline: Activism as a Work of Art", in But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism, ed. Nina Felshin, Seattle: Bay Press, 1995, pp 85–116.

• Doug Ashford, "The Exhibition as an Artistic Medium", Art Journal 57:2, Summer 1998, pp 28-38. [3]

• Julie Ault, et al., Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America, eds. Brian Wallis, Marianne Weems, and Philip Yenawine, New York: NYU Press, 1999.

• Doug Ashford, Wendy Ewald, Nina Felshin, Patricia C. Phillips, "A Conversation on Social Collaboration", Art Journal 65:2, 2006, pp 58-82. [4]

• Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History, ed. Ian Berry, Saratoga Springs, NY: Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, 2009, 272 pp, IA. With essays by Julie Ault, Susan Cahan, David Deitcher, Felix Gonzalex-Torres, Eleanor Heartney, Lawrence Rinder, James Romaine, and a dialogue with Tim Rollins by Ian Berry. Exhibition. Publisher. Video talk.

• Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material, ed. Julie Ault, London: Four Corners Books, 2010, 267 pp. Exh. review: Sam Thorne (Bidoun).

• Doug Ashford, "Group Material: Abstraction as the Onset of the Real", transversal, 2010.

• Alison Green, "Citizen Artists: Group Material", Afterall 26, London, Spring 2011, pp 17-25.

• Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, Group Material “AIDS Timeline”, Kassel: documenta, and Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012.

• Claire Grace, "Spoils of the Sign: Group Material’s Americana, 1985", October 150, Fall 2014, pp 133-160. [5]

• Adair Rounthwaite, Asking the Audience: Participatory Art in 1980s New York, University of Minnesota Press, 2017, 280 pp, PDF, EPUB. On Group Material's Democracy and Martha Rosler's If You Lived Here.... Publisher. Reviews: Gosse (Panorama), Simon (ARLIS/NA), Hankins (ASAP).

• comment . comment . comment: A re-visit of Group Material – Democracy Poll / Demokratische Erhebung 1990, eds. Paula-Marie Kanefendt and nGbK, Berlin: nGbK, 2021, 52 pp. Contributors: Sven Bergelt, Paula-Marie Kanefendt, Elisa Satjukow, Tatjana Schneider, Ingrid Wagner, Paul Zschocke. Publisher. (German)

• Claire Grace, Art Demonstration: Group Material and the 1980s, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (October Books), 2022, 432 pp. Publisher. Review: Oetting (CAA).

• Fiona Geuß, Das dialogische Kunstwerk: Gesprächsformate in der Kunst nach 1968: Art Workers Coalition, Group Material, New Genre Public Art, Bielefeld: transcript, 2023, 246 pp. Based on PhD thesis (Freie U, Berlin, 2019). Excerpt. [6] [7] (German)

Links

• Group Material archive, Fales Library and Special Collections, NYU

• Wikipedia