The Leeds 13 were a collective formed by third year fine art students at the University of Leeds in 1998. They caused a media sensation with their end of year project, Going Places, in which they claimed to have spent thousands of pounds of university union money on a holiday to Málaga.
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Origin
The Leeds 13 started working together in the early spring of 1998. They were 3rd year Fine Art students at the University of Leeds. Their collaboration began when the entire year group – 13 artists with very different individual practices – decided to work together on a single artwork. Their ambition was to devise a critical art practice that tested the protocols of academia and was antithetical to the highly commercialised and predominantly object-based YBA phenomenon that had grown out of Goldsmiths College. Their resulting projects were conceived collectively through a series of group discussions.
Going Places (1998)
Going Places (1998) is the first-and best known-work by The Leeds 13. The project involved a staged trip to Málaga, ostensibly paid for by a grant, that was presented as an end-of-year show. The work went on to generate significant media coverage of both the holiday story and the subsequent revelation that it was staged.
The story of 'Going Places' was first published nationally in the Sunday Mirror, and on the following Wednesday the Leeds 13 were invited onto Radio 4’s Today Programme to justify their actions. In response to the accusations of a relatively hostile panel of commentators, the students announced that the holiday was in fact an elaborate simulation; the photos, tickets and suntans were all fakes. The turquoise Mediterranean that featured so heavily in the holidays snaps was in fact the North Sea just along the coast from Scarborough. The Spanish blue skies were created with a lens filter, and the sun-kissed swimming pool – the iconic symbol of a holiday abroad – was actually located in suburban Leeds.