Keith Arnatt - Exhibition

KEITH ARNATT
Works 1968 - 1990

Private View 10 September, 6.00 – 8.00
11 September – 13 November 2009
Monday – Friday 10am -6pm

Karsten Schubert and Richard Saltoun are pleased to announce an exhibition of the work by Keith Arnatt (1930-2008) This exhibition is only the fourth in a private gallery and the first to take place in more than 30 years. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Charles Harrison and Martin Parr.

Keith Arnatt is considered a pioneer of conceptual art. He documented his early performative “sculpture” in photographs. His subsequent work can be seen as bridging the gap between conceptual art and straight “reportage”. By the late 1970’s he was arguably the most important photographer working in England.

Arnatt was part of a group of artists experimenting with land and text-based art in the late 1960’s. His work featured in the landmark exhibitions that established the conceptual movement, including Konception – Conception (Leverkusen, 1969), 557,087 (Seattle, 1969), Information (MOMA, New York, 1970) and The British Avant Garde (NYCC, New York, 1971). Self Burial, a sequence of nine photographs of the artist progressively buried in the earth, attracted international interest. Self Burial was broadcast on West German television, making it one of the first artworks conceived as a television project. This exhibition features a little-known version of Self Burial held in a German private collection since 1969. The other version of the work is currently on display at Tate Modern.

In 1972 Arnatt had a solo show at the Tate and represented Britain in the Bienal de Sao Paulo XXI, 1991. Private solo shows were held at Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum (Dusseldorf, 1969), Art and Project (Amsterdam, 1970) and Anthony D’Offay (London, 1979).

Recent exhibitions of Arnatt’s work have been held at the Henry Moore Institute (Leeds, 2009) and at the Photographers Gallery (London, 2007). These focused on Arnatt’s conceptual work and his later photographic oeuvre respectively. The current exhibition is selected from over thirty years of work to reveal the consistency of Arnatt’s conceptual approach across a variety of media. Like other experimental artists of the period, Arnatt’s work has had a lasting impact and it is now referenced and emulated by a younger generation of neo-conceptual artists.

For images or further information please contact Ben Parsons on 020 7734 9002 or ben@karstenschubert.com.