Sarah Kent

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Sarah Kent is the art editor of the weekly London "what's on" guide Time Out, and an influential figure in the contemporary British art scene. She was an early supporter of the Young British Artists in general, and Tracey Emin in particular, helping her to get early exposure. This has led to polarised reactions of praise and opposition for Kent. She adopts a feminist stance and has stated her position to be that of "a spokesperson, especially for women artists, in a country that is essentially hostile to contemporary art."^[1]

1 Career
2 Judgements
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Career

Sarah Kent studied painting at the Slade School of Art and worked as an artist until 1977. She then became Exhibitions Director at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) for two years, and also started writing for Time Out. At the ICA she staged exhibitions by Andy Warhol, Allen Jones and Christo, as well as feminist artist Alexis Hunter. Another show was of satirical art, Berlin a Critical View: Ugly Realism. Her own work changed from painting to photography, primarily of male nudes.^[1]

She became art editor of Time Out and continues to write reviews for it. She is now a well-known figure in the arts in London, also appearing on radio and TV shows. She also works in a freelance capacity as an editor and critic, and has provided essays, catalogues and books for the Saatchi Gallery and White Cube gallery. She is the editor of Shark-Infested Waters : The Saatchi Collection of British Art in the 90s (Zwemmer, 1994).

She was an early advocate for the Young British Artists (YBAs), also known as Britart, and a strong supporter of Tracey Emin, helping to get her early exposure. Kent and Matthew Collings have been described as "the parents of the popularization process having audiences approaching half a million each" of "the explosion of art into mainstream culture in nineties London."^[2]

The connection with the YBAs has inevitably attracted criticism similar to that which is directed at the artists:

Many writers involved in the post-modern world deal in a flip and ironic way with both theory and criticism, for example, Jean Baudrillard or the London-based critic and reviewer, Sarah Kent, so that the line between serious theory and the entertainment industry are blurred. I would define the ironic as a refusal to state a sincere political or ethical stance, or if in stating a stance, to continually undermine this, or to change it as suits. It is the opposite of what used to be called 'engaged' or 'committed' or 'sincere'.^[3]

Another criticism is that Kent's freelance working for institutions, such as White Cube and the Saatchi Gallery, whose shows she also reviews in Time Out, is a conflict of interest.^[4]

Advocating Britart, she is on the opposite side of the fence from the traditionally-orientated critic, Brian Sewell. This had led to personal comments in the media. In 1995, when asked about a suitable Christmas present for him (he keeps dogs), she replied:

I'd like to give him a large tank of formaldehyde in which he can pickle his bitches^[5]

Eight years later Sewell commented in one of his articles, referring to a heart operation:

I have made several wills, the first as a young soldier, all of them the precautionary wills of those who do not think of death as immediately relevant. Even on the night before my rib-cage was sawn open and my heart re-plumbed I was prepared to make a joke and bequeathed my eyes to Sarah Kent, the gushing art critic of Time Out, who is not blind but cannot see. ^[6]

She is also mentioned in the lyrics to The Turner Prize Song Art or Arse? - You be the judge, written and performed by Billy Childish, on a Stuckists CD:

Damien Hirst got his fish in a tank

some say it's art others think it's wank

Sarah Kent says he's doing quite well

you gotta make your art and you gotta sell^[7]

The reactions to her mirror the divisions in contemporary art in Britain, and she is praised as a pioneer by Louisa Buck:

“

Sarah Kent has been an energetic chronicler of the contemporary, hoofing off to the most obscure and inacessible venues long before it became fashionable for art to be exhibited in unusual places, and championing both young artists and writers at the beginning of their careers ... on television and radio she is often pitched against more conservative elements as an animated advocate of the wilder shores of today's art.^[1]

”

In 1992 she was a jurist on the Turner Prize panel chaired by (Sir) Nicholas Serota. The other members were Marie-Claude Beaud, Director, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, Robert Hopper, Director, Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, and Howard Karshan. The winner was Grenville Davey, and the other nominees Damien Hirst, David Tremlett and Alison Wilding.^[8]

In October 2002, the art "insider" news site artrumour.com published a survey of the number of times different galleries had been reviewed in Time Out over the preceding two years. ^[9] They divided this into “leagues” based on football leagues. Top of the list with the most reviews in the "Premier League" were:

White Cube 26

Tate Gallery 25

Barbican 14

Royal Academy 14

Sadie Coles 14

Lisson Gallery 12

Photographers Gallery 12

National Portrait Gallery 12

ICA 12

Anthony Wilkinson 12

Stephen Friedman 12

Serpentine Gallery 11

Mobile Home 10

Modern Art 10

Camden Arts Centre 10

South London Gallery 10

National Gallery 10

Hayward Gallery 10

Gagosian Gallery 10

The Saatchi Gallery is at the bottom of Division One with 6 entries, which is explained by the long length of the shows. Artrumour asked, "What the hell is Mobile Home doing in the Premier League? And what are Cabinet, Vilma Gold and Greengrassi doing slumming it in the Beazer Homes League?"^[10]

[edit] Judgements

On Gary Wragg (1983):

Gary Wragg’s huge terra cotta canvases stand out. Sketchy areas of black, white and grey create ambiguously transparent readings of space while chalk and paint lines suggest diagrammatic representations- perhaps of Tai Chi movements^[11]

On Sarah Lucas (1994):

an aesthetic terrorist, pillaging mainstream culture. In doing so she acts as a mirror, monitoring the sexism and misogyny routinely found there.^[3]

On Simon Patterson (1996):

His work is like the physical embodiment of ruminative thought-conceptual art made concrete.^[12]

On Jim Shaw's "thrift store" show (2000):

Critics professing to be gobsmacked by these efforts can never have seen an amateur art show or walked along the railings of the Bayswater road. They should get out more.^[13]