The Silent ‘Plight’ of Joseph Beuys

Intimate installation art that has a memory of its own and comments on increasingly relevant global issues.

My understanding of art was changed by my first ‘primary experience’ with the work of Joseph Beuys. It was one of those pieces that ‘woke me up’ to the potential of what art could be. Of what art could do. I had already seen his work in books at my University (then a Polytechnic) Library and came across this installation during an Art Department trip in 1985.

The Anthony d’Offay gallery was a small, but hugely influential, private gallery just off New Bond Street. It was a fixture of my itinerary for trips to London. It has since ‘wound-down’ and sold most of its collection to the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland but, back in the day, it was well worth seeking out. It was there that I first saw the work of several other artists that would become enduring favourites of mine, including Richard Long, Cy Twombly, Howard Hodgkin and Maurizio Cattelan.

After a long coach journey, there was the London Tube, which at the time was still a novel experience. Back above ground, traffic noise, fumes, the hustle and bustle of the streets, the vibration and low roar of the big city — then entering this little gallery and, as the door swung closed behind me:

absolute quiet…