The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly in London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts through exhibitions, education and debate.
Tracey Karima Emin is an English artist known for autobiographical and confessional artwork. She produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and sewn appliqué. Once the "enfant terrible" of the Young British Artists in the 1980s, Tracey Emin is now a Royal Academician.
Sir Antony Mark David Gormley is a British sculptor. His works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool; and Event Horizon, a multipart site installation which premiered in London in 2007, then subsequently in Madison Square in New York City (2010), São Paulo, Brazil (2012), and Hong Kong (2015–16).
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Damien Hirst-led Young British Artists, followed by shows purely of painting, led to Saatchi Gallery becoming a recognised authority in contemporary art globally. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and finally in Chelsea, Duke of York's HQ, its current location. In 2019 Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity and began a new chapter in its history. Recent exhibitions include the major solo exhibition of the artist JR, JR: Chronicles, and London Grads Now in September 2019 lending the gallery spaces to graduates from leading fine art schools who experienced the cancellation of physical degree shows due to the pandemic.
Momart is a British company specialising in the storage, transportation, and installation of works of art. A major proportion of their business is maintaining often delicate artworks in a secure, climate-controlled environment. The company maintains specialist warehouse facilities adapted for this task. Momart's clients include the Royal Academy of Arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Buckingham Palace. The company received considerable media attention in 2004 when a fire spread to one of their warehouses from an adjacent unit, destroying the works in it, including works by Young British Artists such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, including Emin's 1995 piece Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995. On 5 March 2008 Momart was taken over by Falkland Islands Holdings for £10.3 million, of which £4.6 million was in cash, £2.5 million was in shares and £3.2 million was deferred consideration.
Langlands & Bell are two artists who work collaboratively. Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell, began collaborating in 1978, while studying Fine Art at Middlesex Polytechnic in North London, from 1977 to 1980.
Eva Rothschild RA is an Irish artist based in London.
Richard Wilson is an English sculptor, installation artist and musician.
Eileen Cooper is a British artist, known primarily as a painter and printmaker.
Rodney McMillian is an artist based in Los Angeles. McMillian is a Professor of Sculpture at the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Philip Haas is an American artist, screenwriter and filmmaker, perhaps best known for his 2012 sculpture exhibition "The Four Seasons" and his 1995 film Angels and Insects.
Sir Christopher Mark Le Brun PPRA is a British artist, known primarily as a painter. President of the Royal Academy of Arts from 2011 to December 2019, Le Brun was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours "for services to the arts".
Laura Ford in Cardiff, Wales, is a British sculptor. She is currently president of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
Ben Moore is a British art curator, entrepreneur and artist. He is the founder and curator of Art Below, a contemporary art organisation that places art in public spaces and has had shows in England, Germany, Japan and the United States. He is also the founder and curator of Art Wars, an exhibition of designs based on the Imperial Stormtrooper helmets from Star Wars. In 2021, Moore was part of the Art Wars NFT project which resulted in massive losses for the purchasers of the NFTs and claims of copyright theft from artists whose physical work was reproduced without their permission.
Leonard William Joseph McComb was a Scottish artist. He described his work as visual abstractions after nature. He was very interested in the detail in nature and declared that everything he drew or painted, whether a portrait head, flower, landscape, still life, or breaking sea wave, was, for him, a portrait.
John Loker is a contemporary British abstract painter based in East Anglia and represented by Flowers Gallery, London and New York. Loker has numerous artworks in public and private collections, and has exhibited in some of the UK's major institutions since the 1970s.
Wendy Ann Taylor is an English artist and sculptor, specialising in permanent, site-specific commissions. According to her website, she 'was one of the first artists of her generation to “take art out of the galleries and onto the streets”'. Her work typically consists of large sculptures which are displayed to appear carefully balanced.
Matthew Darbyshire is a British artist who lives and works in London.
Rosie Leventon is a British visual artist whose practice encompasses sculpture, installation, land art, drawing and painting. She is known for making sculptural installations that reference current issues as well as the natural environment,prehistoric archaeology and vernacular architecture.
Wooden sculpture by Shawcross in Basel, Switzerland.
Space Trumpet in Unilever House, London.
Paradigm, statue located outside the Francis Crick Institute.
