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From: Robert McDowell Category: Art Date: 21 November 2009 Time: 08:04 PM Review: 22 Nov.09 1:24am I have just seen Gus Caseley-Heyford's first show in C4's Big Art series. It does a number of very sensible things, essentially questioning how YBA hype was a rush to judgment that involved too much of a break with continuity with the past in craft, content, intellectual value etc. The artists chosen to provide an oblique critical viewpoint such as Anthony Caro, Whitney McVeigh, Grayson Perry, a few others and Goldsmith's and Glasgow student shows suggested now is a time, marked by recession that punctured the YBA price bubble, for a retro re-connect to longer term values like offering slow food as a counter argument, antidote, or simply much superior cuisine to fast fod. Sadly, the prgramme was too short - the artists ecah made profound observations and asked questions, rhetorical or not, that are more than worthy of further exploration - for that alone this was an excellent essay. My take is a longer view too. Two points: 1. We have had a long period of deconstruction that in the last 25 years has lost an intellectual underpinning that is only found in trying to address the big picture, not merely disconnected deconstructed building blocks. YBA has (mataphorically) elevated bricks, piping, choice of carpet as if these alone have something to say about a complete house - insofar as they do it is precious little, and certainly not sufficient to justify national interest - this is were strategy and media's faux shock becomes more important than valuable content, and not least divorced from critical judgment within the art world itself - media footage and column inches alone justify notoriety which suffices in turn to justify exhorbitant art market prices. 2. YBA and related art, notwithstanding its role as signpost template for student emulators and discussants about whither art, has nothing, or very little, to offer, to say, that can debate, question, confirm or criticise, orthodoxies or zeitgeist or values generaly prevailing in any other parts of society, general culture, world politics. It is capricious and shallow, which is of course too easy to say for in fact it says a lot, but only indirectly insofar as it provides extreme evidence of a contemporary media culture in which celebrity alone enjoys its moment in the sun able to drown out other profounder issues. In conclusion: Augustus's start here builds on John Berger's Ways of Seeing and Robert Hughes Shock of the New, but still falls short, if any criticism should be offered at this stage, insofar as it fails yet to ask a number of "so what?" questions. These are not questions that the artists Gus profiled need worry about; they are replete with integrity. But, if it is valid to ask whither contemporary art right now in general then it is worthwhile to ask given all that mankind dwells upon and struggles with, what has the YBA generation in UK and elsewhere got to say? It seems to me that their supposed novelty, freak show or not, has been extremely narrow-focus, self-referential, which is not at all a fault in itself except when the artists are not truly engaged in challenge and deep enquiry about either themselves or the world's state and complexities, merely opportunistically feeding uneducated rich clients. I will look out for more than Gus can uncover. -Robert McDowell, Edinburgh