Leeds 13

The project brief was "come up with something thought-provoking", according to Martin Wainwright northern editor of The Guardian newspaper.[6] The group were interested in popular preconceptions about contemporary art. In particular the boundary between activities acceptable as art and those that were not.[7] They decided to produce a conceptual work with an activity not generally accepted as art. Then they hoped the media would distribute news of the work to the public. To be newsworthy it had to be controversial.[8] If the work started public debate on the nature of art then the group would claim success.[9] They chose to simulate a week-long package holiday on the Spanish Costa del Sol (English: Sun Coast).[10] The group would present the simulation and media response as their end-of-year project Going Places.

Adding to the controversy, the group would appear to misuse financial donations on the holiday. They applied to their students's union, Leeds University Union, for money to mount a conventional exhibition and were granted £1,126.[11][12] The only business sponsor identified by the media was the owner of a local art shop who gave £50.[13][14] The donations were not spent but deposited.

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.[15] Posing as tourism students making a film, they persuaded airport authorities to simulate an arrival from Málaga on the boards then let them exit arrivals landside for the event.[10][5] A prelude in an art space would gather the guests and set the Spanish theme. Having made arrangements for the event they turned to the supporting evidence.

The group would claim to have spent six days swimming, sunbathing and enjoying the nightlife on the Mediterranean Sea coast.[12][16] They forged airline tickets, baggage labels and the postmark on a postcard apparently sent by the group on holiday to Atkinson. Spanish themed props were collected to use as souvenirs and to add local colour to a set of photographs supposedly taken on their holiday. Beach shots were actually taken on the North Sea coast at Cayton Sands near Scarborough.[17] Pool shots were taken at a private open air swimming pool in Chapel Allerton, Leeds.[10][5] A blue lens filter gave the water and sky a Mediterranean look.[18] Other backdrops included bars in Leeds and a wall mural at an abandoned Spanish-themed nightclub in Cayton Bay.[15]

In the week before the event, the group hid in their student accommodation. Using a hired suntanning bed and fake tan,[18] the students built up a skin tone that they later critiqued as "... (perhaps a shade too orange) ...",[17] in an artist's statement published by The Guardian. Preparation for Going Places was complete.

On the evening of 6 May, around 60 guests,[12] including Atkinson and head of department Ken Hay,[8] arrived at East Street Studios in Leeds.[19] They found recorded flamenco music playing and sangria to drink but no artwork or students.[18][10] Journalists were not invited.[15] After half an hour, an air hostess 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.[10][9] The students invited the guests to the bar and after a couple of hours paid the bill supposedly with the last of the donations.[12][20]

Going Places spread across campus to journalists on the Leeds Student newspaper. On Friday 15 May, they ran the holiday story under the front-page headline "Con Artists' Spanish Rip-Off" followed by "And They Call This Art?"[9] Two days later, the national Sunday Mirror newspaper picked up the story.[13] Regional newspapers the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post followed on Monday.[8][14] On Tuesday 19 May, when the hoax was revealed, the holiday story was covered on television, radio and morning newspapers including the Daily Express, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.[20][12][16] The students took turns sharing the holiday story and photographs with journalists. Going Places was promoted from a student newspaper to national news in four days.

News reports covered donors's objections to the apparent misuse of their money and support for Going Places as art from the students. Atkinson said "... an event like that is quite within the bounds of contemporary practice." to Leeds Student.[9] And he told the Yorkshire Post "I don't think there is any problem classifying it as art—good or bad art might be another thing."[8] 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.[11] Using the Going Places group and "sheep-pickler Damien Hirst" as examples,[21] the Yorkshire Evening Post condemned modern art practitioners as more skilled at self-promotion than making art objects. 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."[12]

At this point, only the students, their associates and airport staff knew the holiday had not taken place. Even their tutor Atkinson thought it had. He commented on the group's good fortune that their return flight had arrived on time.[8] The students planned to replace the holiday story with the hoax reality in the next issue of Leeds Student on 5 June.[22] But the intense interest and the possibility the hoax could be exposed,[10] led the group to reveal the truth early.

On Tuesday 19 May, a member of the group appeared on the BBC Radio 4 early morning news programme Today.[10][18] He revealed the holiday was a simulation and the donations were still on deposit. Later that day, the Yorkshire Evening Post confirmed the hoax by checking the facts about the group's arrival with a manager at the airport.[5] The hoax gained more coverage than the holiday from both news and entertainment media.[2]

The group said they had spent other people's money on leisure claiming it was work.[17] This aligned with the public and media's stereotype of art students as lazy and irresponsible.[15] So media outlets rushed to publish, before their rivals, instead of checking the story was true. By revealing the hoax, the students hoped the public and media would reconsider their initial responses. They adopted the name Leeds 13 from the national media.[4][10] 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.[23]

Hay told The Guardian that "[Leeds 13] have got everyone taking about the very things—the nature of art and its relationship with life—that lie at the heart of the course."[6] Art critic Adrian Searle wrote it was a fantastic work that played with preconceptions. Artist and tutor John Stezaker and curator Ralph Rugoff both said the project was interesting art.[24][25] 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.[10] But art academics at other institutions said Going Places only showed the interrelationships between art and media. They also accused the group of further damaging the reputation of artists. More accusations were to follow.

Leeds 13 repaid the grant.[28] But Leeds University Union decided their reputation and that of their 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. In contrast, a University of Leeds spokesman had earlier declined to condemn the group when it appeared they had been on holiday.[12]

In July, the members of Leeds 13 were all awarded 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.[25] 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. In Rugoff's view, Leeds 13, and contemporaries Decima Gallery, were the first artists to make the media their principal medium. He labelled them Neo-Publicists. Leeds 13 ended 1998 with Going Places and its "media frenzy" in The Times Higher Education Supplement news highlights of the year.[30]

In 1999, Leeds 13 contributed to the Go Away: Artists and Travel exhibition at the Royal College of Art (RCA) Galleries, London.[31] Mounted by RCA students on the MA (Fine Art Administration), the exhibition ran 17 April – 6 May. Leeds 13showed holiday photographs, props and clips of television news coverage. Going Places had finally arrived in a conventional exhibition.

The group were interested in the art exhibition phenomenon and two types of relationships in the art world.[3] 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. The group decided to mount a corporate-style exhibition by borrowing a diverse collection of other artists's work. Leeds 13 would put forward the exhibition as art in itself and present it as their project The Degree Show.

Using their new-found notoriety, Leeds 13 secured business sponsorship for the exhibition. Property developer Hammerson hosted the show on the second to top floor of West Riding House,[33][34] Leeds's tallest building. The borrowed works, valued at around £1 million, were by over thirty artists.[35] They included sculpture by Duchamp and Barbara Hepworth, bronze by Rodin and Henry Moore, paintings by David Shepherd and Damian Hirst, collages by Kurt Schwitters, a poster by Jeff Koons, photographs by Jo Spence, the BANK fax-back service and performance by Decima Gallery.[36]

Leeds 13 hung or mounted, lit and secured the works.[3] They also created the catalogue, wall labels, advertising and website. 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."[36][35]

The Degree Show was open to the public 8–18 June.[36] Leeds 13's tutor and art historian Ben Read told The Times newspaper that students normally showed their own work. He continued by asking "Have they made these works their own art?"[37] Read concluded that the exhibition had stimulated debate on the nature of art.

However, other responses to the exhibition as art in itself were negative. Most media reports included a re-run of Going Places; some suggested The Degree Show was another hoax containing forgeries.[34][38] 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.[35] One report predicted careers in public relations.[39] 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."[34] Only academia accepted the exhibition as art in itself.

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.[34] Shepherd, who exhibited two paintings, said the show was a good opportunity for the public to view such a diverse collection of work. And Read noted The Degree Show had more visitors than any of the department's previous exhibitions.[37]

The day after the show opened, the students received six first and eight upper second class degrees.[32][40] But the studio practice half of their marks, for The Degree Show, was only upper second.[41] Seven students appealed claiming the examiners had rushed the marking due to industrial action. Their appeal was successful and all fourteen received first class degrees.