Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé
Michael Craig-Martin
Martin Creed
Tacita Dean
Jeremy Deller
Alan Kane
Bill Furlong
Liam Gillick
Douglas Gordon
Graham Gussin
Susan Hiller
Jaki Irvine
Alan Johnston
Mark Lewis
Hilary Lloyd
Brighid Lowe
Sarah Lucas
Julian Opie
Yinka Shonibare
Bob Smith
Roberta Smith
Gillian Wearing
Richard Wright
Virginia Button
Charles Esche
5/7/2000
Intelligence
Tate Gallery, London
New British Art 2000: Intelligence is the first in a series of major exhibitions of contemporary British art, to be held every three years at Tate Britain. Intelligence will be the largest loan exhibition ever held at Millbank. Intelligence means both information gathering (intelligence as in MI5) and the faculty employed to process information into something new.
New British Art 2000: Intelligence is the first in a series of major exhibitions of contemporary British
art, to be held every three years at Tate Britain. Intelligence will be the largest loan exhibition ever
held at Millbank.
Intelligence means both information gathering (intelligence as in MI5) and the faculty employed to
process information into something new. Many artists today can be seen as intelligence agents at
large in society, gathering, sifting and transforming the raw data of our life, critically examining our
environment, the way we live and our relations with each other. This exhibition brings together
twenty-two contemporary British artists who share such an approach. They see art as a means for
imagining the world differently, or 'thinking otherwise' as the French philosopher Foucault put it. Their
work asks questions and offers clues, but does not provide a packaged answer or experience. It is
an investigation of the world and in turn they invite the visitor to use their own intelligence to
investigate the art and come to their own conclusions.
The artists represented are Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé, Michael Craig-Martin, Martin Creed, Tacita
Dean, Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Bill Furlong, Liam Gillick, Douglas Gordon, Graham Gussin, Susan
Hiller, Jaki Irvine, Alan Johnston, Mark Lewis, Hilary Lloyd, Brighid Lowe, Sarah Lucas, Julian Opie,
Yinka Shonibare, Bob and Roberta Smith, Gillian Wearing and Richard Wright.
Works exhibited include Tacita Dean's film Bubble House, an enigmatic meditation on the failure of the
utopian aspirations of modernism, featuring an abandoned futurist house on a Caribbean island;
Sarah Lucas's Life's a Drag Organs in which two burnt out cars decorated with unsmoked
cigarettes suggest a pair of lungs; Bob and Roberta Smith's Protest where visitors can record their
protests (at anything, including the exhibition) and a weekly selection will be sign written onto the
walls; and Gillian Wearing's Drunk, a remarkable three screen video projection made in collaboration
with a group of street drinkers in South London.
At the beginning, middle and end of Intelligence three artists, Julian Opie, Liam Gillick and William
Furlong, will make works that suggest the crucial role of conversation and dialogue in the exhibition.
New British Art 2000: Intelligence is curated by Virginia Button, Senior Programme Curator, Tate
Britain, and Charles Esche, an independent curator and writer working with proto-academy,
Edinburgh, and Afterall journal.