Art by Peter Carty

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A visionary curator sets up a gallery in a decaying warehouse in Hoxton, bringing together a group of radical young artists at a seminal moment in British art. But as they produce stellar new work and prepare to storm the bastions of the art establishment, ruthless property developers are gentrifying the area and pushing them out. Meanwhile, a tidal wave of cocaine and organised crime threatens everything. Art is a dark satire about the birth of Young British Artists in the early 1990s, faithfully reflecting the period and its creative obsessions. Illuminating, moving and blackly funny, it mercilessly exposes the pretensions of fine art and high theory ... as well as the unrestrained hedonism and low life that ran alongside. Paperback, 280 pages. Show more