AVANT GARDE ART WHAT’S GOING UP IN THE 80S. 1980.

Edinburgh: Demarco Gallery, 1980
30 x 21cm, 65 sheets of mostly 2pp Xeroxed pages laid in loose in a 42 x 31cm folded Xerox/poster/covers with reproduced Free International University stamp. The exceptionally hard to find handout given to those attending Beuys’ FIU event during the 1980 Edinburgh International Arts Festival. The texts are mostly political and environmental – with the, then, emotive battle to stop Torness Nuclear Power Station being a major theme (oh how things change: in 2014 the Demarco Gallery took major financial sponsorship from the company around the Torness Plant to project an art film on the latter’s outer walls as a special event – perhaps then it is good thing that the original campaign failed) as is the battle to release Jimmy Boyle from prison – the former murder’s life-changing experience of becoming an artist led to Beuys championing Boyle’s release from the Barlinnie Special Unit (where an experiment in penal reform had been spectacularly effective much to the chagrin of the right wing government who did not want such experiments to be proved worthwhile). Other items touched on in this publication included British Imperial policy in Northern Ireland and international trade issues.

There are articles with Beuys and discussions about his methods as well as poorly reproduced photographs of the artist (polarised through the use of Xerox). The collected publication was expected to form the background reading for a series of public discussions and interventions in politics by the Beuys’ initiated Free International University – which took the place of the usual exhibitions displayed by the Demarco Gallery during the Edinburgh Festival. Some edge wear to the oversize outer wrappers and former fold but over all a very good example of a quite scarce item which was intended to be ephemeral in nature and has, indeed, rarely survived intact.