ARTIFICIAL HELLS

notes to pages 172– 3
(Walker, John Latham: The Incidental Person, p. 100.) In a letter to
Walker, Steveni argued that most artists had been happy to go along with
being called an Incidental Person instead of an artist, noting that ‘in
particular, Beuys at Documenta 6 when APG gave an exposé of the work,
proclaimed “Incidental Person Yes, Artist No” ’. (Letter, 18 July 1994,
from Barbara Steveni to John Walker; 9913/ 1/ 4, p. 9, in John Walker
papers, Tate Archive.)
40 Breakwell: ‘they thought it would be interesting for me to look at the
abnormal society, the closed world of Broadmoor, as a diarist. So there’s
an obvious connection there. Whereas I don’t know what I would possibly
have found of interest in British Steel, for instance. This was about
illness, mental states, people, and they are central to my works. I’m not
interested so much in materials.’ (Breakwell, interviewed by Victoria
Worsley, December 2004/ January 2005, National Sound Archive, British
Library, Tape 16910, side A.)
41 Ian Breakwell, ‘From the Inside: A Personal History of Work on Placement
with the Department of Health and Related Work 1976– 1980’, Art
Monthly, 40, October 1980, p. 4. Because of the restriction of the Official
Secrets Act, Breakwell tended to present this project only in APG events
and symposia, rather than in exhibitions. These discussions include the
Stadtische Kunstmuseum Bonn (‘Kunst alz Soziale Strategie’, 1977), the
Royal College of Art (‘Incidental Person Approach to Government’, 27
October 1977), and Documenta 6 (1977).
42 Mick Kemp, architect, cited in ‘Ian Breakwell Feasibility Study phase 1
and 2’, 1976, Tate Archive.
43 Ian Breakwell, ‘APG Report’, cited in Dodd, Artists Placement Group
1966– 1976, p. 69.
44 Dodd, Artists Placement Group 1966– 1976, p. 47.
45 The Reminiscence Aids Project was a ‘nostalgia jukebox’ for the elderly
and senile, devised by Mick Kemp, in collaboration with two other APG
artists, David Toop and Hugh Davies (both artists and musicians). See
Breakwell, ‘From the Inside’, pp. 2– 6, and the Department of Health and
Society Security’s ‘Report of Research Findings and Recommendations
for Future Development of Reminiscence Aids’, 1980.
46 Initially the Russian constructivist architect Bertolt Lubetkin had
provided plans for the town, but he resigned in 1950; a few years later the
abstract painter Victor Pasmore was brought onto the project as a consultant;
between 1963 and 1970 Pasmore produced an elegant modernist
pavilion that had, by the later 1970s, been abandoned by the council and
was something of a tip.
47 Brisley recalls that his father had been a strong union worker for the railways,
and was involved in the National Strike of 1926; he had instilled in
Brisley ‘the notion of miners as the avant- garde of the working class’.
(Brisley, interview with the author, London, 7 August 2009.)
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