Leeds 13
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Leeds 13 were a year group of BA
(Fine Art) students
at the University of Leeds in the late-1990s.
Their four-year degree was marked in two equally weighted parts:
art theory/history and studio practice.
Students usually worked as individuals,
and in studio practice produced their own art projects to show at an end-of-year exhibition.
However, in their third and fourth years,
the Leeds 13 year group worked on studio practice as an artist collective
producing two large-scale conceptual artworks
and unconventional exhibitions.
Going Places (1998)
challenged the media and public’s preconceptions about
contemporary art and artists.
The group pretended to go on a week-long fun in the sun Spanish holiday,
apparently spending financial donations for mounting a conventional exhibition,
then claimed to have made art and the exhibition
of themselves and their trip.
The holiday story fooled first a student newspaper
then regional and national media outlets
whose responses to the work and the students were predictably negative.
A few days later, Leeds 13 revealed the truth—the holiday was an elaborate hoax
and the donations would be repaid—hoping that the
media and public would reconsider their initial responses.
This created a media frenzy and
embarrassment for outlets who ran the story without checking it was true.
Leeds 13 presented the holiday simulation and response in the media as their project.
The Degree Show (1999) challenged the conventions of academic fine art end-of-year exhibitions.
With their new found notoriety,
Leeds 13 obtained corporate sponsorship and
borrowed around £1 million worth of work by other artists.
Using the eclectic collection of artworks as conceptual props,
the group put its effort into mounting a successful show.
They claimed the exhibition was art in itself and presented it as their project.
All the members of Leeds 13 graduated with first class degrees,
and most continued working together until mid-2000.
In contrast to the conventional idea of artist as an individual
using their skill to produce objects potentially for sale,
Leeds 13 were a collective who used their skills to produce one-off events that were unsaleable.
Going Places is widely regarded as a skillfully executed media hoax,
and has entered art history as an example of pushing the boundaries.
Going Places (1998)[edit]
All thirteen third-year fine art students, nine women and four men,[3]
began the 1997–1998 academic year working as individuals.
Through weekly seminars with their tutor Terry Atkinson,
they formed a collective for studio practice later known as Leeds 13.[4]
Concept[edit]
The brief for the end-of-year project was “come up with something thought-provoking”.[5]
The group were interested in popular preconceptions around contemporary art
particularly the boundary between activities acceptable as art practice
and those that were not.[6]
They decided to produce a conceptual work, with an activity not generally accepted as art,
and hoped the media would distribute news of the project to the public.
To be newsworthy the project had to be controversial,[7]
and the group would claim success if it started public debate on the nature of art.[8]
They chose to simulate a week-long package holiday on the Spanish Costa del Sol (English: Sun Coast).
The group would present the simulation and the media response to both
the supposed holiday and the actual hoax as their project Going Places.
Preparation[edit]
Adding to the controversy,
the group would appear to misuse financial donations, for mounting a conventional end-of-year exhibition,
on the holiday.
They applied to their students’s union Leeds University Union,
and were granted £1,126.[9][10]
The only business sponsor identified by the media was the
owner of an art shop in Leeds who gave £50.[11][12]
The donations were not spent but deposited.
Evidence for the holiday included a performance art event, stories, props and suntans.
The group’s supposed return from holiday would be staged at the local international airport
for an audience of invited guests.[13]
Posing as tourism students making a film, they persuaded airport authorities
to simulate a flight from Málaga on the arrivals board then
let them exit the landside area of international arrivals for the event.[14][10]
A prelude in an art space would gather the audience and set the Spanish theme.
Having made arrangements for the event they turned to the holiday stories and props.
The group would claim to have spent six days
swimming, sunbathing, drinking and enjoying the nightlife in Estepona
(misspelled Estrepona in most newspaper reports)
on the Mediterranean Sea coast.[12][15][8]
They created a set of photographs supposedly taken on their holiday.
Beach shots were actually taken on the North Sea coast at Cayton Sands near Scarborough,[3]
while pool shots were from a private open air swimming pool in Chapel Allerton, Leeds.[16]
A blue lens filter gave the water and sky a Mediterranean look.
Other locations included bars in Leeds and a wall mural, that reminded the students of Gaudi,
at an abandoned Spanish-themed nightclub in Cayton Bay.[13]
Supposedly taken during a week’s holiday on the Costa del Sol,
the group claimed the set of photographs hinted at a longer time frame and different locations.[17]
In the week before the event, the group hid in their student accomodation.
Using a hired suntanning bed in one of their houses, they built up
“… superficial tans (perhaps a shade too orange) …”[3]
Preparation for Going Places was complete.
Holiday and response[edit]
On the evening of 6 May, around 50 guests,[5]
including the group’s tutor Atkinson and head of department Ken Hay,[7]
arrived at East Street Studios in Leeds.[18]
They found Spanish music, sangria and an air hostess, played by a drama student, but no artwork.
Journalists had not been invited.[13]
The hostess led the guests to a charter bus that took them to Leeds Bradford Airport then guided them to
a bar from where they witnessed the apparent return of the suntanned students.
The group invited the guests to the bar, and, after a couple of hours paid the bill
supposedly with the last of the donations.[10][19]
Going Places spread across campus to journalists on the Leeds Student newspaper that
broke the story on Friday 15 May
with front-page headline “Con artists’ Spanish rip-off” continued inside under
“And they call this art?”[8]
Two days later, the holiday story was picked up by the national Sunday Mirror newspaper.[11]
Regional newspapers the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post
followed on Monday.[7][12]
On Tuesday 19 May, when the hoax was revealed, reports of the holiday story were already
in national morning newspapers including the Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph and
The Guardian.[19][10][15]
By taking turns sharing the holiday story and photographs with journalists,
members of the group had managed to get Going Places from a student newspaper to a wide range of national news outlets
in four days.
News reports covered objections from the donors to apparent misuse of their money
and support for Going Places from the students and Atkinson who said
“… an event like that is quite within the bounds of contemporary practice.” and
“I don’t think there is any problem classifying it as art – good or bad art might be another thing.”[8][7]
Some newspapers also ran opinion pieces on Going Places as art.
Leeds Student said it was neither creative nor original because
millions of people take package holidays every year.[9]
Using the Going Places group and “sheep-pickler Damien Hirst” as examples,[20]
the Yorkshire Evening Post condemned modern art practitioners as more skilled at self-promotion than making art objects.
Instead of Atkinson, The Daily Telegraph asked art critics for their opinion of Going Places;
Brian Sewell dismissed it,
while Richard Dorment said
“This is not a good work of art. It seems to me on the edge of being a hoax and quite a good joke.
I think the joke wins.”[10]
At this point, only the students, their associates and airport staff knew the holiday had not taken place.
Even Atkinson thought it had, and he commented on the group’s good fortune in keeping the holiday a secret and
their return flight being on schedule.[7]
The students planned to reveal the truth in the next issue of Leeds Student on 5 June,
[21]
but, given the intense interest and the possibility of exposure through fact checking by the media,
they went early replacing the story of Going Places the holiday with the reality of Going Places the hoax.
Hoax and response[edit]
On Tuesday 19 May, a member of the group appeared on the
BBC Radio 4 early morning news and current affairs programme Today
to reveal the holiday was a simulation and the donations were still on deposit.[13][22]
By that afternoon, the Yorkshire Evening Post had confirmed the hoax
by checking the facts about the group’s return with a manager at the airport.[14]
The hoax gained more coverage than
the holiday from both the news and entertainment media.[2]
The group wrote
“During our brief foray into the limelight,
we have added greatly to the jollity of the nation.”,[3]
and adopted the name given to them by the national media: Leeds 13.[4][23]
The group offered a stereotype of lazy and irresponsible contemporary art students who spent other people’s money on leisure claiming it was work.[3]
As the holiday story confirmed popular preconceptions,[13]
media outlets rushed to publish before their rivals instead of checking the story was actually true.
By revealing the hoax—the money had not been spent and creating the simulation had been a great deal of work—Leeds 13
hoped the public and media would reconsider their initial responses.[3]
Going Places was described as masterly by head of department Ken Hay
“They have got everyone taking about the very things—the nature of art and its relationship with life—that lie at the heart of the course.”[5]
Art critic Adrian Searle thought it was a fantastic work that played with preconceptions.[24]
Artist and tutor John Stezaker and
curator Ralph Rugoff both thought the project was interesting art.[25][26]
Germaine Greer wrote Going Places was a masterpiece of “… the only art that millennial culture recognises … marketing.”
Publicist Max Clifford said the group were “great PR students”,[27]
and found the embarrassment of media outlets fooled by the holiday story “hysterical”.[28]
However, art academics at other institutions said Going Places was not interesting beyond showing the mutual reliance of art and the media, and accused the group of damaging the reputation of artists.[25]
Further accusations were to follow.
The group repaid the grant from the students’s union.[29]
However, Leeds University Union felt the deceptions had
damaged the reputations of students and the union itself,
and they demanded an apology for publication in Leeds Student.
Leeds 13 refused so its members were banned from the union for life.
In contrast, a University of Leeds spokesman had earlier declined to condemn
the group when it appeared they had both spent the donations and gone on holiday.[10]
In mid-July, the members of Leeds 13 were all awarded first class for their third year, and
“Examiners praised them for challenging popular perceptions about how art is produced, taught and criticised.”[30]
Ongoing response[edit]
In September 1998, an essay on the history of artists using the media, with Going Places as the most recent example,
by curator Ralph Rugoff appeared in Frieze magazine.[26]
Rugoff wrote that Leeds 13 and contemporaries Decima Gallery had gone further than their predecessors by
making the media their principal medium, and labeled them Neo-Publicists.
He continued Going Places was “… a perfectly executed double whammy.”
that provoked the public into discussing the nature of art “… though the results were hardly enlightening.”
More interesting, in Rugoff’s view, was that by reporting on Going Places the media had added new facets to the work.
Going Places and its “… media frenzy …” were included in
The Times Higher Education Supplement news highlights of 1998.[31]
The 2013 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures were given by artist Grayson Perry.
Beating the Bounds examined the idea that anything can be art using Going Places as an example,[32][33]
and Perry found the project an amusing parody of that idea.
In 2022, Vice Media produced a short documentary on Going Places featuring two Leeds 13 members and
Martin Wainwright former Northern Editor of The Guardian who covered the group’s projects in Leeds.[34]
According to Wainwright both the holiday story and hoax reality were “extremely entertaining”,
and Going Places should be considered one of history’s famous hoaxes.
The Degree Show (1999)[edit]
For their fourth and final year, Leeds 13 were joined by two new members,[2]
and again did studio practice as a collective.
Concept[edit]
The group were interested in the growing role of the private sector as art patrons,
the idea that the significance of a particular artwork was in relation to other works,[35]
and the issues of plagiarism and authorship for a collective.[36]
With their new found notoriety,
they decided to mount a successful corporate-style exhibition
featuring an eclectic collection of borrowed works by other artists as conceptual props.
Leeds 13 would claim the exhibition was art in itself and present it as their project The Degree Show.
Preparation[edit]
The group arranged business sponsors including property developers Hammerson
who hosted the exhibition on the nineteenth floor of their twenty storey West Riding House,[37][38]
Leeds’s tallest building.
They also borrowed works, by over 30 artists and valued at around £1 million,[39]
in a wide range of forms:
sculpture by Duchamp and Barbara Hepworth, bronze by Rodin and Henry Moore,
paintings by David Shepard and Damian Hirst,
collages by Kurt Schwitters, a poster by Jeff Koons,
photographs by Jo Spence, the BANK fax-back service, video, audio, furniture and performance.[40]
Leeds 13 hung or mounted, lit and secured the works.
They also created written material including the catalogue, wall labels, advertising and the website.
The borrowing continued in the introductory essay,
a literary collage of art writing,
that explained the concept with
“As Hugh McDiarmid said ‘the greater the plagiarism the greater the work of art.’
If we can accept this dissident posture we can take this exhibition as a work of art in itself.”[41]
Response[edit]
The Degree Show was open to the public 8–18 June 1999,[41]
longer than the three to four days typical for end-of-year exhibitions.
Leeds 13’s tutor Ben Read conceded that students normally showed their own work,
but asked “Have they made these works their own art?” before
concluding that the exhibition had stimulated debate on the nature of art.[42]
However, other responses to the exhibition as art in itself were negative.
Most media reports included a re-run of the Going Places hoax,
and some suggested The Degree Show was another hoax
that included fake artwork or was a feint before the
students revealed their own art objects neither of which were true.[38][43]
As the students had not shown their own work that year or the previous one,
questions were asked about what had they been doing apart from grabbing headlines.[39]
Alternative careers were suggested in public relations or curation.[43][44]
David Lee of the Art Review summed up with “They made a shrewd point last year by the way they hoodwinked the media and the art world,
and maybe this year confirms the important point that the path to success in modern art is through notoriety.
It sounds like a complete abrogation of responsibility as a degree show.”[38]
Only academia accepted the exhibition as art in itself.
In contrast, the response to The Degree Show as an exhibition was positive.
According to a local gallery owner, who lent works by Rodin and Henry Moore, the mounting of the show of was excellent.[38]
David Shepherd, who exhibited two paintings, said the variety of work made it a great opportunity for the viewing public
and Read noted The Degree Show had more visitors than any of the department’s previous exhibitions.[42]
The day after the exhibition opened, the students were awarded six first class and eight upper second class degrees
(one student did not complete the year).[45]
However, the exhibition, the studio practice half of their marks, had only been graded upper second.[46]
Seven students appealed claiming the examiners had rushed their deliberations due to industrial action.
Their appeal was successful, and all fourteen were awarded first class degrees.
After graduation (2000)[edit]
In March 2000, Leeds 13 appeared in the f.k.a.a. (formerly known as art) exhibition
at The Wardrobe, Leeds.[47]
They presented a collection of Going Places items
each one wrapped and given an arbitrary price
including a bikini top for £69.96, a Frisbee for £110, a pair of men’s shorts for £80,000 and
the album of holiday photographs for £13 million.[48]
The group originally claimed that Going Places had not produced works for market,[3]
but by f.k.a.a. costumes and props from the project
had become art apparently for sale.[48]
By mid-2000, eleven members were working on the last Leeds 13 project covered in the media:
promoting the Batofar cultural centre and restaurant
in a repurposed lighthouse ship on the Seine, Paris.[2][1]
References[edit]
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External links[edit]
- Official website containing photographs and copies of newspaper articles including those distributed by the University of Leeds Press Office (see All Files)
- Going Places
- The Degree Show
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