The British Council’s exhibition of YBA (Young British Artists) has been cancelled due to a lack of funding and sponsorship. The exhibition was expected to be one of the features of the UK-Russia Year of Culture. The British Council said it ‘hoped the exhibition would eventually go ahead’.
“Our partner and host venue, the Ekaterina Foundation, for reasons outside its control, has reluctantly had to withdraw due to not being able to raise the sponsorship funding they had originally been confident of achieving,” it said, in a statement.
“We’ve worked together to investigate a possible alternative venue – but this has proved problematic at this late stage. We have therefore agreed to postpone the exhibition, with a view to mounting it at the Ekaterina Foundation in 2016, and we hope that this will be possible.”
London Calling: Breakthroughs in British Art, 1986 – 1999 was scheduled to open in the Autumn and would have been the first major Russian exhibition of artists from the YBA movement, which includes Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Damien Hirst, Gavin Turk and Sarah Lucas. The exhibition was also set to feature works included in the Freeze (1988) and Sensation (1997) shows, which brought the artists worldwide recognition.
It has been suggested that the exhibition was cancelled because of increased international tensions in the Ukraine, however this has not been confirmed by the British Council.