Paperback, colour and black and white illustrations,528 pages, W185mm X H235mm
In the 15th century the ideas of the great Renaissance artists required
the attentions of engineers and artisans to construct and explain the
dynamics of their ambitious works. Leonardo da Vinci's helicopter was
built in a studio; very probably his submarine was also built.
Today
that endeavour and enquiry is represented by Mike Smith, whose studio
in the Old Kent Road in London furnishes the architecture for the most
pressing installations and sculptures of young British artists. He is
the carborundum that enables the best artists working in Britain today
to realize their work - Rachel Whiteread's monument in Trafalgar Square
is a testament to his work. The painter Patsy Craig has unravelled the
activities of the Mike Smith Studios, including the symbiosis of the
studio with the process of creation of such artists as Damien Hirst,
Mona Hatoum, Keith Tyson, Darren Almond and Mark Wallinger.
She has
collected from the Studio's archives, along with the detritus, the
correspondence, notes, ideas, failures and successes of these and other
artists at the studio. They are a diary and vade mecum of the
construction of a significant theory in current British art. It is an
assembly of the very templates of the thinking, design and creation of
art in Britain today.