Strategy: Get Arts

The formation and impact of the landmark exhibition Strategy: Get Arts, staged at Edinburgh College of Art as part of the Edinburgh Festival in 1970Watch Brian Cox and Sir Nicholas Serota discuss Strategy: Get Arts and Richard Demarco in an excerpt from RICO (The Richard Demarco Story) (2021), directed by Dr Marco J. Federici

Authored and guest edited by Dr Christian Weikop, a renowned specialist on modern and contemporary German art.Includes work from Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo, Klaus Rinke, Stefan Wewerka, Günther Uecker and many more.Based on archival research at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA).Featuring guest contributions by academics and curators, including individuals directly involved with Strategy: Get Arts in 1970.Incorporating numerous arresting ‘event photographs’ of the exhibition, taken by George Oliver, Monika Baumgartl, and Richard Demarco, many never seen before and published here for the first time.Based on close archival research, Christian Weikop uncovers unknown and exciting narratives, as well as artist networks, concerning this provocative 1970 exhibition, held at ECA. The author has previously considered the British press reception of SGA in an article for Tate Papers, but this Studies in Photography-EUP book publication goes far beyond that article and any other scholarship on the exhibition by taking into account the contributions of all 35 artists based in Düsseldorf, and incorporating testimony of individuals who were involved in this landmark exhibition, or who were later engaged in archive exhibitions or recreation projects. Weikop explores the formation of the exhibition in the context of a late 1960s culture of protests and occupations, and demonstrates that SGA was a pivotal ‘Shock of the New’ moment that would leave its mark on art education.

You can find out more about Strategy Get Arts at the ECA here