Tuesday 9th July | 10:00 – 12:30 | 1 hour slide session ABG / 1.5 hour visit, Tate Britain | Led by Elizabeth Fullerton

This course will look at the significance of the YBAs, poster children for British art during the 1990s. Before they burst on the scene, artists in Britain were expected to graft for decades before they could hope for any gallery representation or for a show. Suddenly this ragtag group who made abject, witty art about life, death and sex were being exhibited everywhere and putting British contemporary art on the international map. We will delve into the stories behind famous artworks, the networks of relationships around the artists, what made them so successful and their most enduring legacy. Yet there’s another story too of forgotten names. The YBA phenomenon eclipsed a generation of important artists, pushing them to the sidelines and they have only recently started to gain long overdue attention. We will take a trip to Tate Britain to look at works by the YBAs alongside those of their neglected counterparts with the aim of gaining a more balanced picture of contemporary art in Britain in the 1990s.