Art & Language

About the artist:

Art & Language is the collaborative practice of Michael Baldwin who was born 1945 in Chipping Norton, Mel Ramsden who was born 1944 in Ilkeston, and Charles Harrison who was born 1942 in Chesham and died 2009.

The name Art & Language was first adopted in 1968, to refer to a collaborative practice that had developed over the previous two years between Michael Baldwin and Terry Atkinson, in association with David Bainbridge and Harold Hurrell. Over the next several years it stood for a collaborative practice with a growing and changing membership associated with the journal Art-Language, first published in May 1969, and subsequently with a second journal The Fox, which was published in New York in 1975-6. Joseph Kosuth was invited to act as American editor of Art-Language in 1969. In the following year Mel Ramsden and Ian Burn merged their separate collaboration with Art & Language. Charles Harrison became editor of Art-Language in 1971. By the mid-1970s some 20 people were associated with the name, divided between England and New York. From 1976, however, the genealogical thread of Art & Language’s artistic work was taken solely into the hands of Baldwin and Ramsden, with the theoretical and critical collaboration of these two with Charles Harrison.

Their work is held in public and private collections including Arts Council of Great Britain, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Collection, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Selected solo exhibitions include Devinera qui pourra (Figure it out who can), Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin (2019); Ten Posters: Illustration for Art-Language, Centre de Creation Contemporaine Olivier Debre, Tours (2017); Nobody Spoke, Kunstsaele, Berlin (2017); Museu d’Art Contemporary de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona (2014); Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (2013); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2012); Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo (2009); Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Malaga (2004); Musée d’Art Moderne, Lille (2002); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (1999); Jeu de Paume, Paris (1993); ICA, London (1991); Tate Gallery, London (1985); Musée d’Art Moderne, Toulon (1982); and Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1974). Selected group exhibitions include Guernica, National Picasso Museum, Paris (2017); Conceptual Art in Britain: 1964-1979, Tate Britain, London (2016); Before Normal: Concept After Concept, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskkilde (2014); Invisible: Art about the Unseen 1957–2012, Hayward Gallery, London (2012); Sound of Music, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2009); documenta 10, Kassel (1997); documenta 7, Kassel (1982); and the Xème Biennale Internationale d’Art, Palais de L’Europe, Menton (1974).

Awards include nomination for the Turner Prize (1986).