K Foundation Art Award - Context

Context

In June 1993 the newly-formed K Foundation began taking out full page national press adverts. Initial advertisements were cryptic, referring to "K Time" and advising readers to "Kick out the clocks". They mentioned five year journeys which included pop success and deep space travel and that "the sands of time are running in". There was also an advert for the K Foundation's single "K Cera Cera" which was "Available nowhere ... no formats" and which was not planned for release until world peace was established.

There was a change of direction with the fourth advert which appeared on 14 August 1993, reading: "ABANDON ALL ART NOW. Major rethink in progress. Await further announcements." The next ad (28 August 1993) read: "It has come to our attention that you did not abandon all art now. Further direct action is thus necessary. The K Foundation announce the 'mutha of all awards', the 1994 K Foundation award for the worst artist of the year." It then went on to detail how a shortlist of four artists had been chosen, and that they would be exhibited in the Tate Gallery.

One of the first newspaper pieces about the K Foundation appeared in The Guardian the following Monday, correctly pointing out that the shortlist and exhibition were actually for the 1993 Turner Prize, the controversial £20,000 annual award given by the UK art establishment to the best young contemporary artist, but assuming that the K Foundation prize was a hoax. "As for the K Foundation", the newspaper wrote, "it stands unmasked as the current performing face of those cherished old friends of pop pranksterdom, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty", formerly known as The KLF. In September, the organisers of the Turner Prize responded publicly that "It proves the validity of our prize that somebody would take so much trouble to set up this award".

The Foundation's next advert invited the general public to vote for the worst artist, either by going to the exhibition and using their critical faculties or by letting their inherent prejudices come to the fore. The final advert summarised the whole campaign, asked some questions back to the people that had written to them, and explained that the winner of the K Foundation award would be announced in a TV advert during the live Turner Prize coverage on Channel 4 television.

On 20 November 1993, The Economist reported on the K Foundation prize and placed it in context. "Every autumn for the past ten years, an increasingly bad-tempered squabble has raged between, on the one hand, many of Britain's art critics and its popular media, and on the other, its avant-garde "establishment," the small croterie of art historians, curators, and dealers who control the Turner prize." Predicting that Rachel Whiteread, creator of the controversial sculpture, House, would win both awards, the magazine said that, if it were so, "the vast numbers of people who equate contemporary art with rubbish will, yet again, feel vindicated."

The K Foundation's television adverts on the evening of 23 November 1993 explained that the Foundation were currently "amending the history of art" at a secret location. No mention of the alternative award was made in the post-Turner Prize studio discussion. However, in the Turner Prize ceremony itself, Lord Palumbo, head of the Arts Council, referred to critics of the Turner Prize as a "confederacy of dunces". The K Foundation reportedly pre-announced Rachel Whiteread as their winner at 2pm or, at least, at some time before the Turner; at 9.30pm, live on television, the Turner Prize was awarded to the same artist. Whiteread reluctantly collected her K Foundation winnings at just past 11pm, saying, "sarcastically, "What an honour.""

Drummond claimed the advertising campaign cost £250,000. The television advertisements cost £20,000, an amount which Scotland on Sunday said was "carefully chosen to match the value of the Turner prize", the newspaper adding that "Copies of the invoices were supplied as evidence." Each press advert cost between £5,000 and £15,000.