Keith Arnatt: Works 1969–90

Karsten Schubert and Richard Saltoun are pleased to announce an exhibition of the work by Keith Arnatt (1930-2008). This exhibition is only the fourth in a private gallery and the first to take place in more than 30 years. 

Keith Arnatt is considered a pioneer of Conceptual art. He documented his early performative 'sculpture' in photographs, whilst his subsequent work can be seen as bridging the gap between Conceptual art and straight 'reportage'. 

Arnatt was part of a group of artists experimenting with land and text-based art in the late 1960s. His work featured in the landmark exhibitions that established the Conceptual movement, including Konception – Conception (Leverkusen, 1969); 557,087 (Seattle, 1969); Information (MoMA, New York, 1970); and The British Avant Garde (NYCC, New York, 1971).

This display at Karsten Schubert is selected from over thirty years of work to reveal the consistency of Arnatt’s conceptual approach across a variety of media. Most notably, the exhibition features a little-known version of Self Burial; a sequence of nine photographs of the artist progressively buried in the earth, which was broadcast on West German television as one of the first artworks to be conceived as a television project. Like other experimental artists of the period, Arnatt’s work has had a lasting impact and it is now referenced and emulated by a younger generation of Neo-Conceptual artists.