Art & Language - Late 1970s

Late 1970s

By the end of the 1970s, the group was essentially reduced to Baldwin, Harrison and Ramsden, with the occasional participation of Mayo Thompson and his group Red Crayola. The political analysis that developed within the group resulted in many members leaving to work in more activist political occupations. Ian Burn returned to Australia where they joined forces with Ian Milliss, a conceptual artist who had begun working with trade unions in the early 1970s, to set up Union Media Services, a design studio specialising in social marketing and community and trade union based art initiatives. Other UK members drifted off into a variety of creative, academic and sometimes "politicised" occupations.

Decisive action had become necessary if any vestige of Art & Language’s original ethos was to remain. There were those who saw themselves excluded from this who departed for individual occupations in teaching or as artists. There were others immune to the troubles who simply found different work. Terry Atkinson had departed in 1974. There were yet others whose departure was expedited by those whose practice had continued (and continues) to be identified with the journal Art-Language and its artistic commitments. While musical activities continued and continue with Mayo Thompson and The Red Crayola, and the literary conversational project continued with Charles Harrison (1942–2009), by late 1976 the genealogical thread of this artistic work had been taken into the hands of Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, with whom it remains.