The stale art scene of the late 80s was swatted away by Young British Artists like VHS-art pioneer Henry Bond. Appropriation and pastiche were his signature, and the scene’s gonzo nightlife wormed its way into his visual art via morning-after movies – which often, as in this image from 1993, turned the lens on his then girlfriend, Sam Taylor-Wood.
“In 1993, I was living with Sam on Hoxton Square. We wanted to party hard almost every night, while by day we were busy with friends like Sarah Lucas, Angus Fairhurst and Damien Hirst, transforming the stuffy, constipated British art scene – we were turned off by the old farts like Nicholas Logsdail and Leslie Waddington.
We wanted to make art our way and we did, and when we weren’t doing anything else we just went down the Bricklayers Arms on Charlotte Street to hang out with Liam Howlett and the Chemical Brothers. High times in EC2. I used to take my Sony camcorder everywhere in those days and annoy people by filming them at breakfast nursing a hangover.”
