My buddy Nick James, who has died aged 75, arrange a spoof artwork gallery in London within the early Nineteen Seventies that invited the artwork world to take a great take a look at itself.
He opened up his area, referred to as merely The Gallery, in 1973 as a critique of the industrial artwork gallery system because it associated to conceptual artwork, which had grow to be all the craze a number of years earlier. The Gallery’s first present consisted of some crude potato prints, adopted by a number of exhibitions that includes the invented work of madeup conceptual artists.
Because it was simply across the nook from the a lot better recognized Lisson Gallery, which promoted real-life conceptual artwork, quite a lot of guests confused the 2 galleries, a lot to Nick’s delight. Higher nonetheless, the madeup “artists” have been subsequently provided a gaggle present by a curator on the ICA, who had mistaken their work for one thing real.
Subsequently, I steered to Nick a collection of shows at The Gallery specializing in look reasonably than idea, a deliberate reversal of the thrust of conceptual artwork, and a extra refined critique than straight spoofing. He agreed and invited me to affix him as co-director.
With no artists in sight, actual or invented, we placed on exhibitions that includes photographs taken from varied mundane sources – together with a German knitwear equipment firm and the sociology division of Sheffield Polytechnic. Nick defined all of it in his persuasive, charming option to puzzled artwork critics, and large names from the artwork world began visiting to see what was happening.
A later present exhibited facsimiles of the work of eight conceptual artists who had gone on report as saying they’d no drawback with reproductions of their work. Their sellers thought in any other case, after all, and we have been issued with writs. We reduce the present brief in consequence, changing the displays with copies of the authorized letters we had obtained.
Not lengthy afterwards The Gallery started to start out exhibiting work by actual conceptual artists, together with John Latham, nevertheless it closed in 1978 when the lease on its constructing ran out.
Born in Bromley, Kent, Nick was the son of Fritz Wegner, an illustrator, and his spouse, Janet (nee Barber), a journalist. He studied at College School faculty, Hampstead, after which on the Slade Faculty of Tremendous Artwork in London, the place he painted within the post-impressionist model.
Over time Nick made a dwelling instructing artwork night courses in Hackney, east London, providing personal artwork courses and taking over freelance work as an illustrator for promoting businesses.
He additionally arrange Cv/Visible Arts Analysis, an imprint that revealed books, pamphlets and audio books on artwork, together with Painted Lives by Marina Vaizey (2019) and works by David Hockney and Vanessa Bell.
All of the whereas he painted underneath the identify of Philip James, having modified his surname in maturity. Elected a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 2016, he exhibited yearly at its exhibition in London in addition to on the Royal Academy of Arts summer time exhibition, the Turner Gallery in Exeter and Whittington Tremendous Artwork in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
He and his spouse, Sarah Batiste, a painter and sculptor, married in 1985. She survives him, as do their youngsters, Alexandra, Emma and Lucy.
