Elliot Gibbons

University College London
Professor Robert Mills, Professor of Medieval Studies, University College London; and Nathan Ladd, Curator, Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain

October 2024 –

This project will examine art produced in relation to the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Britain from 1987 to 1996. The art historian Simon Watney argued that British governmental policies and their collusion with the media infringed upon the representation of AIDS, leading to a ‘crisis of representation’. Indeed, several contemporary British artists sought to address the representation of AIDS through their work. These artists, or their artworks, however, have received very little attention within the canon of British art history. The project seeks to address the lack of attention these artists received by interrogating their place among two movements in play at the time: the Black British Arts Movement and the Young British Artists (YBAs). The rise of the YBAs meant that artists who were part of the Black British Arts Movement were obscured by the apolitical zeitgeist at the time.

However, the writer Isabel Waidner recently argued that the YBAs also obscured art produced in relation to the AIDS crisis. One aim of the project is to interrogate how these periodisations hinder the canonisation of art produced in reaction to HIV and AIDS in Britain. Passed in 1988, Section 28, which prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools and local governments, also hindered the visibility of these artists and artworks. Tate, as a public institution, may have been impacted by such policies and so another focus of the project will be Tate’s collecting practices and exhibitions among those of other public arts organisations at the time. Additionally, the project will also interrogate how some artworks that displayed explicit activist sensibilities may have been consequently classified as activism rather than artworks. The ways in which some of these artists and artworks actively trouble a clear distinction between these two modalities will be considered as another factor leading to their occlusion.

About Elliot Gibbons

Elliot Gibbons is a writer, researcher and curator. He has held a part-time position as an Assistant Curator, Public Programmes at Tate since 2022. Before this, he was awarded Arts Council England funding to independently curate ‘Southend’s Twilight Worlds’. He holds an MA in History of Art at UCL, where he wrote a thesis on the work of the late artist Hamad Butt that was awarded the Oxford Art Journal Prize for Best Dissertation. He also holds a BA (hons) in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts (UAL). His writing has been published by thisistomorrow, AQNB, Object and Texte Zur Kunst.

Instagram @elliotgibbons

Selected Publications

Elliot Gibbons, ‘It’s Like Arguing with a Brick Wall’, Texte Zur Kunst, 11 August 2023, https://www.textezurkunst.de/en/articles/elliot-gibbons-martin-wong-its-like-arguing-with-a-brick-wall/, accessed 21 October 2024.

Elliot Gibbons, ‘On Derek Jarman’s Time’, Southend’s Twilight Worlds, Southend-on-Sea 2022, ed. by Elliot Gibbons, pp.26–31.

Elliot Gibbons, ‘Tailoring Disidentification: CFGNY dismantles Western notions of “Asian-ness” with their Collecting Dissonance exhibition at London’s Auto Italia’, AQNB, 21 June 2021, https://www.aqnb.com/2021/06/21/tailoring-disidentification-cfgny-dismantles-hegemonic-ideas-of-asianness-with-their-collecting-dissonance-exhibition-at-londons-auto-italia/, accessed 21 October 2024.