Art & Language: Nobody Spoke, Lisson Gallery

Nobody Spoke comes more than four decades after the shifting collective group Art & Language first exhibited at the celebrated London contemporary art gallery, Lisson. Along with their journal, Art-Language, the group has remained a decisive influence on the landscape of modern art with their blurring of the boundaries between art and artist. Founded in 1966, the original members Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Harold Hurrell and David Bainbridge, were critically responding to the failings of Modernism and the loosening of its hold in 1960s Britain.
Art-Language journal
Art-Language issue number one was published in 1969 with the subtitle of ‘The Journal of Conceptual Art’. This was a pivotal moment as it was the first time anyone had been exposed to ‘conceptual’ art in print. The Art & Language collective soon established itself as an entity devoid of labels or stringent protocols, instead attracting multitudes of artists to engage in organic discussion and development. Due to its all-encompassing nature the collective remained notoriously hard to define for a decade, its members seemingly united by only one thing – a fierce tendency to question everything.
Lisson Gallery exhibition
Featuring five unseen paintings, the Lisson Gallery London show will also include 17 ‘chairs’ - non-practical seats composed of 10 overlapping paintings. The imagery and motifs used on the chairs will reference past works from the group’s history as will the performance installation taking place elsewhere in the gallery. All-in-all Art & Language’s latest contemporary art exhibition will be a whirlwind of references and hard-thought enquiry, utterly worthy of the collective’s notable history.