Post-YBAs
Post-YBAs is a loose critical label for the British artists who emerged in the 2000s, after the generation of Young British Artists that dominated the 1990s. It names no formal movement and no self-declared group; critics reached for it to describe a sensibility more modestly material and formal than the spectacle-driven work of the YBAs. As Matthew Higgs observed, Simon Starling's 2005 Turner Prize win marked the shift. The generation - among them Jeremy Deller, Mike Nelson, Eva Rothschild, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Darren Almond, and Martin Maloney - is associated with a neo-conceptual art with a political edge, renewed attention to craft and hand-made materials, and work that trades shock tactics for patient reconstruction, documentary method, and institutional critique.
Defining characteristics
- Restrained, materially modest presentation: quiet objects over spectacle and shock
- Craft and hand-worked materials prized over industrial finish
- Neo-conceptual framing: the idea, system, or reconstruction carries the work
- Political and social content built into documentary, participatory, or re-enacted forms
- Immersive, site-specific environments assembled from ordinary, worn materials
Key figures
- Jeremy Deller (1966-) — Conceptual artist whose collaborative re-enactments put politics and other people at the center
- Mike Nelson (1967-) — Installation artist building elaborate walk-through fictional environments
- Eva Rothschild (1971-) — Sculptor in aluminium, jesmonite, leather, and fabric with a lean formal language
- Simon Starling (1967-) — Conceptual artist whose material transformations won the 2005 Turner Prize
Example works
- The Battle of Orgreave — Jeremy Deller (2001)
- The Coral Reef — Mike Nelson (2000)
- Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No. 2) — Simon Starling (2005)
Sources
- Post-YBAs - Wikipedia encyclopedia