This major exhibition of 23 young British Artists is drawn mainly from the celebrated "Goldsmiths generation", whose fusion of minimal and conceptual art with the everyday brought them to the attention of the art world in the early 1990's. Through professionally presented warehouse exhibitions in London's Docklands, often including epic and witty artworks with a slick detached look, these artists challenged accepted notions of the major galleries control over the London artworld, and an individual artist's promotion.
The title of this exhibition, "Dimensions Variable" points to one of the underlying preoccupations of the young British artists selected for this show: the constantly shifting perspectives that new information, new technologies and new circumstances make evident. Vong Phanophantit's sculpture of pendulous rubber forms slowly making their progress down a framework of metal struts is an obvious case in point. No photographs, no set of dimensions, no documentation can capture the work in its entirety, since its entirety only exists during the process of evolution. But the exhibition title can also be seen to refer to a mood that permeates the work of young British artists as we draw towards the millennium, a mood defined by openness to change, resourcefulness, a willingness and an ability to seize the day.
There is also a sensitiveness of the unnerving power of alternation: Mat Collishaw digitally produces cancerous transformations on flower pieces. Don Brown and Stephen Murphy create an image of something that never existed, though it might have done. Fiona Banner re-interprets a familiar narrative, making it unfamiliar. Mark Wallinger re-runs a familiar piece of film footage of the Royal Family, using our own altered perceptions of tradition and monarchy to make this appear surreal. In a period of change, these artists seem to find uncertainty liberating!
Curator of the exhibition: Ann Gallagher.
The artists exhibited in Dimensions Variable are:
Fiona Banner, Angela Bulloch, Don Brown and Stephen Murphy,
Mat Collishaw, Martin Creed, Willie Doherty, Angus Fairhurst, Ceal Floyer, Douglas Gordon, Graham Gussin, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Michael Landy, Chris Ofili, Vong Phaophanit, Simon Patterson, Georgina Starr, Sam Taylor-Wood, Mark Wallinger, Gillian Wearing, Rachel Whiteread, Catherine Yass.
