ARTIFICIAL HELLS

artificial hells
London ICA in 1966. Latham’s interests bridged art, philosophy and
science, and can be seen in his use of books as a sculptural material from
1958 on: publications are turned into monuments, burnt, incorporated into
assemblages, or even submerged in a tank of piranhas. He is probably best
known for his 1966 performance Still and Chew, in which he and some of
his students masticated a copy of Clement Greenberg’s Art and Culture
borrowed from the library of St Martins School of Art. When the library
requested that he return the book, Latham did so – but as a vial of chewedup
pages. (The performance caused Latham to be fired from his job at St
Martin’s, but its remains – Art and Culture [1966– 69] – were acquired by
MoMA in 1970.) In the same year, 1966, Latham established APG with his
partner Barbara Steveni, also trained as an artist. 4 The organisation was
premised on the idea that art has a useful contribution to make to the
world, and that artists can serve society – not by making works of art, but
through their verbal interactions in the context of institutions and organisations.
To this end, Steveni and Latham organised placements or
residencies for British artists in a range of private corporations and public
bodies.
Steveni recounts that the original idea for such an organisation was her
initiative. She was in contact with Fluxus artists in the early ’60s, and
recalls how the idea of APG came to her one night in 1965 while collecting
detritus for Daniel Spoerri and Robert Filliou on the Slough Trading
Estate on the outskirts of West London. She realised that it might be
more socially useful for artists to work inside these factories rather than
to use the materials abandoned outside them. The idea was given further
momentum when Steveni was invited by Frank Martin to give a lecture
at St Martins on the role of the artist in society, and to do a weekly questionnaire
on this topic with the students. Martin encouraged her to meet
Sir Robert Adeane, an influential chairman of several companies (including
Esso and ICI). Adeane was enthused by Steveni’s proposal and
offered to be on APG’s board; Steveni hastily assembled one and in 1966
APG became an organisation ready to negotiate placements between
artists and business. 5
How the artists’ placements were organised was not simply a matter
of pragmatics, but provides an insight into the ideological orientation of
APG. To state the procedure at its baldest: Barbara Steveni would write
to a selection of host organisations outlining the goals of APG; these
organisations were invited to pay a fee to the artist, who would undertake
a residency on site; in return, companies were advised not to
anticipate the production of a work of art, but rather to think of themselves
having the benefit of a creative outsider in their midst (an
‘Incidental Person’, in APG’s terminology). Steveni frames APG’s
purpose as a new form of patronage bringing together two disparate
domains, industry and the arts:
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