Leeds 13’s John Crossley:
"I survived a national media frenzy"
What was it like to be an art student and face full-on UK media coverage?
As an art student in the UK a decade ago, I survived a media frenzy. I was one of thirteen Leeds art students who decided that, instead of staging a conventional end of year show, we would pretend to go on holiday. This is an account of a faked holiday to Spain and how the national media became part of our artwork, entitled Going Places (1998).
Leeds 13. One of several photos documenting Going Places (1998). Here the artist group presented documentation of a holiday to Spain as an art performance, when the photos were in fact taken in northern England.
The sequence of events began with a proposal for funding to the University Union, who gave us over £1000 to put on an exhibition. Although an exhibition space was booked, no conventional artworks were produced. Instead, we collaborated in producing evidence of a holiday in Malaga. This included photos of us in a Leeds outdoor pool, the North Sea and in Spanish-looking bars; fake tickets and boarding passes and Spanish souvenirs and tans from a hired sun-bed.
For the week before the opening night, we did not go to any classes or answer the phones, as we hid from our friends. When guests arrived for the opening night, they were met by an actress playing an air hostess, sangria and flamenco music, but no artwork. The hostess then put the guests on a hired bus that took them to the airport. In arrivals, the airport authorities had put up a non-existent flight on the arrivals screen for us; we appeared as though we had just emerged from passport control with our “evidence”.
Video documentation of Leeds 13 simulation and performance (1998). To the left, guests gather at the art show opening. After being taken to Leeds-Bradford airport, they greet the Leeds 13 “arriving from their Spanish holiday”.
We did not invite any press to the opening night in case our claims were all too transparent. Nevertheless, we kept to our story and after a few days the student newspaper ran a front-page headline: “Con Artists’ Spanish Rip-off – Art grant funds holiday in sun". After a few more days the story made one national paper and then it seemed that everyone picked up on it. The story had spread virally, from one media outlet to the next without us doing anything further.
It was overwhelming.
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