Leeds 13

The brief for the end-of-year project was "come up with something thought-provoking",[6] according to Martin Wainwright northern editor of The Guardian newspaper.[7] The group were interested in popular preconceptions about art, particularly the boundary between activities acceptable as art and those that were not.[8] They decided to produce a work with an activity not generally accepted as art,[9] and hoped the media would distribute news of the work to the public.[7] To be newsworthy, it had to be controversial.[10]

Deceiving donors then journalists was key to the group's plan. They would pitch a conventional art exhibition to donors asking for money to mount the show. Later, journalists would be told the group had spent the donations on a week-long holiday to the Costa del Sol (English: Sun Coast). The students would say they had made art and the exhibition out of themselves and their trip.[8][11] Finally, the group would reveal the holiday was a simulation and the donations had not been spent.[12] If the work provoked public debate on the nature of art then the students would claim success, and they called their project Going Places.[8]

The group applied to their students's union, Leeds University Union, for money to mount a exhibition and were granted £1,126.[13] The only business sponsor identified by the media was the owner of a local art shop who donated £50.[11][14]

Evidence for the holiday included a performance art event, stories, props and suntans. The group's supposed arrival back from Spain would be staged at the local international airport for invited guests.[9] Posing as tourism students making a film,[15] they deceived airport authorities into simulating a flight from Málaga on the announcement boards then letting them exit arrivals for the event.[7][16] A prelude in an art space would gather the guests and set the Spanish theme before the event at the airport.[12]

The group would claim to have spent six days swimming, sunbathing and enjoying the nightlife on the Mediterranean coast.[17][18] They forged airline tickets, baggage labels and a postcard sent by the group apparently from Spain to their tutor.[7][4] Spanish themed props were collected to use as souvenirs and to add local colour to a set of photographs supposedly taken on their holiday.[9] Beach shots were actually taken on the North Sea coast at Cayton Sands,[6] Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Pool shots were taken at a private open air swimming pool in Chapel Allerton, Leeds. A blue lens filter gave the water and sky a Mediterranean look.[7] Other backdrops included bars in Leeds and a wall mural, that reminded the students of Gaudí, at an abandoned Spanish-themed nightclub in Cayton Bay.[6]

In the week before the event, the group hid in their student accommodation. Using a hired suntanning bed and fake tan,[12] the students built up a skin tone that they later critiqued as "... (perhaps a shade too orange) ...", in an artist's statement published by The Guardian.[5]

On the evening of 6 May 1998, around 60 guests,[17] including tutor Atkinson and head of department Ken Hay,[10] arrived at East Street Studios in Leeds.[9] They found recorded flamenco music playing and sangria to drink but no artwork or students. After half an hour, an air stewardess appeared and led the guests to a bus that took them to Leeds Bradford Airport. There they saw the group apparently arriving back from their holiday.[12] The students invited the guests to the bar and after a couple of hours paid the bill supposedly with the last of the donations.[17][19]

Going Places spread across campus to journalists on the Leeds Student newspaper.[12][9] On Friday 15 May, they ran the holiday story under the front-page headline "Con Artists' Spanish Rip-Off" continued inside with "And They Call This Art?"[8] Two days later, the national Sunday Mirror newspaper picked up the story.[11] Regional newspapers the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post followed on Monday.[10][14] On Tuesday 19 May, when the hoax was revealed, the holiday story was covered on television, radio and in national morning newspapers including the Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Times.[19][17][18][20]

Newspaper reports covered donors's objections to the apparent misuse of their money and support for Going Places as art from the students and their tutor. Atkinson said "... an event like that is quite within the bounds of contemporary practice" to Leeds Student.[8] And he told The Times "It's definitely art, but whether it's good or bad art is another thing."[21] Some newspapers also ran opinion pieces on Going Places as art. Leeds Student said it was neither creative nor original because millions of people take package holidays every year.[13] Using the Going Places group and "sheep-pickler Damien Hirst" as examples, the Yorkshire Evening Post condemned modern art practitioners as more skilled at self-promotion than making art objects.[22] Instead of Atkinson, The Daily Telegraph asked art critics for their opinion. Brian Sewell dismissed Going Places, while Richard Dorment said "This is not a good work of art. It seems to me on the edge of being a hoax and quite a good joke. I think the joke wins."[17]

The group had also deceived their tutor. Speaking about the event to the Yorkshire Post, Atkinson said "It was quite a coup de théâtre. They were lucky because the plane could have been 12 hours late."[10] The students planned to replace the holiday story with the hoax reality a fortnight later in the next issue of Leeds Student but they "... decided to confess early when the issue became 'very hot'.", according to The Times.[21]

On Tuesday 19 May 1998, a member of the group appeared on the BBC Radio 4 early morning news programme Today. He revealed the holiday was a simulation and the donations had not been spent.[12][7] Later that day, the Yorkshire Evening Post confirmed the hoax by checking facts about the group's arrival with a manager at the airport.[16] The entertainment media joined news outlets in covering the hoax.[7]

The group said they had spent other people's money on leisure claiming it was work.[5] This matched the public and media's stereotype of art students as lazy and immoral.[23] So instead of checking the story was true, the media rushed to publish, according to newspaper editor Wainwright in a Vice Media podcast about the project.[7] By revealing the hoax, the students hoped the public and media would reconsider their initial responses.[5] They adopted the name Leeds 13 from the national media.[7] It was a name "... calculated to suggest ironic overtones of terroristic notoriety." according to art journalist Paul Glinkowski in his book A BBC Introduction to Modern and Contemporary Art.[24]

Head of department Hay told The Guardian that "[Leeds 13] have got everyone talking about the very things—the nature of art and its relationship with life—that lie at the heart of the course." The Guardian art critic Adrian Searle wrote it was a fantastic work that played with preconceptions.[6] Artist and tutor John Stezaker and curator Ralph Rugoff both said the project was interesting art.[25][23] Germaine Greer wrote Going Places was a masterpiece of marketing.[26] Publicist Max Clifford complimented the group's public relations skills,[27] and he said the embarrassment of journalists who had been hoaxed was hilarious.[7] But art academics at other institutions said Going Places only showed the relationships between art and media. They also accused the group of further damaging the reputation of artists.[25]

Leeds 13 repaid the grant, but Leeds University Union decided its reputation and that of its students had been damaged by the group's deceptions. They demanded an apology for publication in Leeds Student. Leeds 13 refused so its members were banned from their students's union for life.[28] In contrast, a University of Leeds spokesman had earlier declined to condemn the group when it appeared they had been on holiday.[17]

In July, the members of Leeds 13 all received first class for their third year. According to a BBC News report "Examiners praised them for challenging popular perceptions about how art is produced, taught and criticised."[29]

Leeds 13's place in art history was explored by Rugoff in the September-October edition of Frieze magazine. He wrote that Going Places was a "... perfectly executed double whammy." It had provoked public debate on the nature of art but Rugoff did not think the results had been illuminating. More interesting was that in distributing news of the work the media had added new facets to it. In Rugoff's view, Leeds 13, and contemporaries Decima Gallery, were the first artists to make the media their principal medium, and he labelled them Neo-Publicists.[23]

Leeds 13 ended 1998 with Going Places and its "media frenzy" in The Times Higher Education Supplement news highlights of the year.[30]

Going Places became a subject in at least two conventional art exhibitions.

Framed was a Decima Gallery retrospective that ran in October 1998, and was anticipated in Rugoff's article.[23] The following year, Decima performed Diana the Dancing Cow at Leeds 13's exhibition The Degree Show. In their artists's statement for that performance, Decima wrote that Framed was the Neo-Publicists's first exhibition and Leeds 13 showed "... situationist pieces ..."[31] However, the list of artwork and exhibitions on Leeds 13's official website does not mention Framed.[32]

Go Away: Artists and Travel at the Royal College of Art (RCA) Galleries, London ran from 17 April to 6 May 1999. The exhibition was mounted by RCA students on the MA (Fine Art Administration). Leeds 13 showed Going Places holiday photographs, props and clips of television news coverage.[33]

f.k.a.a. (formerly known as art) at The Wardrobe, Leeds ran 16–18 March 2000.[34] The group showed a collection of Going Places items wrapped and priced. These included a bikini top for £69.96, Frisbee £110, men's shorts £80,000 and the album of holiday photographs for £13 million.[35] Leeds 13 originally said that Going Places did not produce works of art for market.[5] But by f.k.a.a. clothing and props from the project had become art objects.[35]

The group were interested in the art exhibition phenomenon and two types of relationships in the art world. First, the relationships between works of art that gave each one its significance relative to others. Second, the relationships between art world participants including artists and private sector patrons.[3] The group decided to mount an exhibition showing a diverse collection of borrowed works by other artists.[36] Leeds 13 would present the exhibition as art in itself and called their end-of-year project The Degree Show.[31]

Using their new-found notoriety, Leeds 13 secured corporate and local business sponsorship for the exhibition,[31] with property developer Hammerson hosting the show in West Riding House.[37] The borrowed works, valued at around £1 million, were by over thirty artists.[38] They included sculpture by Duchamp and Barbara Hepworth, bronze by Rodin and Henry Moore, paintings by David Shepherd and Damien Hirst, collages by Kurt Schwitters, a poster by Jeff Koons, photographs by Jo Spence, the BANK fax-back service and performance by Decima Gallery.[31]

Leeds 13 hung or mounted, lit and secured the works. They also created the catalogue, wall labels, advertising and website.[3] The borrowing continued in the introductory essay, a literary collage of art writing. It explained the concept with "As Hugh McDiarmid said 'the greater the plagiarism the greater the work of art.' If we can accept this dissident posture we can take this exhibition as a work of art in itself."[31]

The Degree Show was open to the public 8–18 June 1999.[31] Leeds 13's tutor and art historian Ben Read told The Times that students normally showed their own work. He continued by asking "Have they made these works their own art?" Read concluded that the exhibition had stimulated debate on the nature of art.[39]

However, other responses to the exhibition as art in itself were negative. Most media reports included a re-run of Going Places;[40][41] some noted suspicions that The Degree Show was another hoax containing forgeries.[36][42] As the students had not shown their own conventional artworks that year or the previous one, questions were asked about what had they been doing.[38] Critic David Lee of Art Review magazine told The Guardian "[Leeds 13] made a shrewd point last year by the way they hoodwinked the media and the art world, and maybe this year confirms the important point that the path to success in modern art is through notoriety. It sounds like a complete abrogation of responsibility as a degree show."[36]

In contrast, the response to The Degree Show as an exhibition was positive. According to a local gallery owner, who lent works by Rodin and Moore, the mounting of the show was excellent.[36] She also appreciated the inclusion of work by artists with Leeds connections: Hepworth, Hirst and Moore.[41] Shepherd, who exhibited two paintings, said the show was a good opportunity for the public to view such a diverse collection of work.[36] And Read noted The Degree Show had more visitors than any of the department's previous exhibitions.[39]

Leeds 13's members were given upper second class for The Degree Show, the studio practice half of their marks.[43] This was added to their individual marks for art history/theory. The day after the show opened, the fourteen students received six first and eight upper second class degrees.[2] But seven students appealed claiming the examiners had rushed marking The Degree Show due to industrial action. Their appeal was successful and in September they all received first class degrees.[43]