Welcome to our overview of artists in the London scene, 2011-2041
Intellectual property and privacy legislation precludes us from identifying by name the artists in these biographies; however, their fame should make them easily identifiable.
Artist 1, male
Despite living far from traditional centres of culture, this artist worked prolifically on projects in every continent until travel became too dangerous, expensive and environmentally unviable in advance of the peak oil meltdowns in the mid 2020s. His intimate understanding of the power of language, communication and human relations led him to develop a partnership with the world’s leading telecoms company making personalised speech/text artworks. These works, seen as a welcome alternative to personalised advertising, are delivered as subliminal messages during voice calls and text communications. This, together with his use of augmented reality to deliver projects around the world made him the UK’s top grossing artist in 2030s.
Artist 2, collective
A champion of local practice, this artist group decided to capitalise on difficulties associated with travel to reiterate their belief in only working within their local area. In 2014, they set up the first ever artist-led local community academy to bring traditional artistic techniques to non-art trained people. The centre burned down 6 years after it was built. In 2035 they went on to run another art academy in a rural part of the Midlands. Academy members were asked to reject all internet and email communications and only made artworks if their form and content was agreed by all academy members. Dependent entirely on sales to tourists and local trades, the collective have successively narrowed their choice of artistic techniques, so that in the last few years they are only making paintings, resisting mass manufacturing techniques available through rapid prototyping and 3D printing.
Artist 3, female
Quickly becoming resigned to the trajectory and new methodologies of the art world, this artist has continued to make a very good living selling a variety of writing - journal articles, newspaper blogs, manuals, pop-psychology - and uses this income to supplement her loss-making poetry. In 2014 she set up the first literature BA course conducted entirely online, and communicating to her students through podcasts, video and blog entries. She was quite happy to stop sending work to hardcopy publishers, and instead wholeheartedly threw herself into exclusive online and virtual publication.
Artist 4, male
Enthusiastic advocate of the mystical, philosophical and political end of the arts, this artist started his career making long-winded and hard-to-follow moving image pieces disseminated on YouTube. A major activist in the artist strikes that occurred in the '30's, he set up one of the first free artist-led schools that were ideologically opposed to the newly resturctured formal art schools and still runs it successfully today. His early idealism is rewarded by an ongoing international cult following and plenty of students waiting to enrol in his classes; an annual festival in Skye sometimes draws him out of his almost hermit-like existence, but at over 90 years old his public appearances are becoming less and less frequent.
Artist 5, female
This artist was an important and vocal advocate of traditional artistic production, and directed the last live music event in the UK before all public funding was cut in 2038. Now in her seventies, she remains on the Government advisory board for the Creative Industries and greatly assists in initiatives for the presentation and production of live art. In 2031 she took Youview, the national internet TV provider, to court to prevent them restaging one of her early works for 3D home theatre, and successfully convinced them to instead broadcast the work live.
Artist 6, female
Using her work to focus attention on international human rights abuses in democratic countries, this artist was also one of the earliest innovators on working with social networks to make political change. Her well-known 2021 Facebook Slam project took over around 30% of the online giant - at the time, roughly 3.4billion accounts - and created a huge temporary network of online activists for social change credited with toppling the oppressive government in Vietnam and overturning several long-standing bans on public assembly. Much of the material she released to these accounts had been freely available online for years, but she was eventually prosecuted for this piece in 2023, and sentenced in the USA to serve 8 years in prison in absentia.
Artist 7, female
Has supported her practice for the last 30 years working as an art tutor in one of the reformed academies, teaching on the Resigned Philosophy MA programme. Although her earliest work included visceral and body-oriented performance art, her increasing interest in semantics lent itself very well to the new, workshop-free curriculum of theory and history, and she has led the course for over 25 years. A staunch supporter of the move away from hand making and workshop techniques, it was under her instigation that a policy of book-scanning for all art school libraries was begun, leading to greater access to art information over the internet for students on international courses. She also wrote the first PhD with no citations, using only online resources, in 2017, and thus founded a new branch of academic writing, the so-called Wiki School.
Artist 8, female
Throughout the 2020's this artist was a defender of the live aspect of performance art, and one of Artist 7's greatest critics - indeed, the '20's art scene in London was dominated completely by the divide embodied by their opposing positions. Although very intelligent and erudite, her campaign against 7's book-scanning policy was greatly hampered by her ideological rejection of technology which could have spread her message more effectively, and refusal to engage in crowdfunding to support her cause. Although it is believed that she still practices, she set her Facebook Page status update to 'Not here' sometime in the early 2030's and has since disappeared from the art world - her last confirmed appearance was in 2032 where she eccentrically created a performance for only one person. Her Facebook Page records in excess of 26million fans.
Artist 9, male
Part of an early internet pioneering collaborative group, Artist 9's practice embraced chance encounters and a Dadaesque, 'bad boy' spirit. Initially feted by the art market and very commercially successful until the mid-2020's, a series of drug and alcohol addictions eventually caused the group to fall apart in some acrimony over unenforceable copyright agreements and the money these had generated. After a protracted legal battle with mounting costs, the group finally settled out of court and split the rest of their substantial fortune between them, and each retired from art. Nothing more is known specifically about Artist 9, but he is believed to live in some isolation in the Caribbean, and is unable to return to the UK.
Artist 10, male
Always treading the line between academic research, experimental arts practice and social engagement, Artist 10 found the cultural transitions to internet-based arts presentation most difficult of all the artists in the London scene of 2011. His practice had been largely peripatetic and international, with a wide live audience and critical engagement with contemporary themes of place. An early innovator of crowdfunding, he successfully raised 2.3million old pounds in 2027 to take a group of artists from an artist-led academy to the desert in Utah, USA, to build a short-term community, which was intended to provoke new ways to think about urban landscapes and communal living practices. They were scheduled to return after 3 months, but all contact was lost with the group after 4 weeks, and their current whereabouts remain a mystery.
Artist 11, female
One of the doyens of London's early 20th century arts, Artist 11, who died in 2028 at the age of 84, was single-handedly responsible for most of the political resistance to arts funding cuts and the general shift from live events. She has been cited as an influence by most of the younger generation of artists, and a chair in philosophy was inaugurated in her name at the BP University of the Arts in London in 2038 on the anniversary of her death.
And now we come to the end of our alternative tour. Thank you for listening.
Before you go we’d like to give you a map (273kb, GIF) featuring historic pearls of wisdom, collected from artists who were selected to represent the London art scene by the Barbican Art Gallery in 2011.