K Foundation

K Foundation
An early K Foundation advert: "Time is running in"
Background information
Origin	United Kingdom
Years active	1993–1995
Past members	Jimmy Cauty Bill Drummond

The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by

The K Foundation announced a 23-year moratorium on all projects from November 1995. They further indicated that they would not speak about the burning of the million pounds during the period of this moratorium.

Context

In the early 1980s, British musician and artist

The first manifestation of the K Foundation was a series of adverts in UK national newspapers in 1993. The first adverts, in July 1993, were cryptic, referring to "K Time" and advising readers to "Kick out the clocks".[16]^[17] There was also an advert for their single "K Cera Cera" which was "Available nowhere ... no formats" and which was not planned for release until world peace was established. The single was eventually released, but only in Israel.^[18]

"When the first in a strange series of full-page ads appeared in The Independent on July 4", said The Face, "people started whispering. The cultish rhetoric, the unfathomable "Divide and Kreate" slogans, the K symbols, all suggested that the kings of cultural anarchy were back."^[19][20] Each advert cost between £5,000 and £15,000.^[21]

Turner Prize subversion

The 1994 K Foundation award was an award given by the K Foundation to the "worst artist of the year". The Foundation commissioned more press adverts,^[21] instructing readers to "Abandon all art now"^[22] and then inviting them to vote for the worst artist of the year.^[23][24] The 1993 Turner Prize was being judged at the same time, and, perhaps not coincidentally, both awards had the same shortlist of four artists.^[25] The prize being offered by Drummond and Cauty was £40,000 which was double the £20,000 offered for the Turner Prize.^[26]

Channel 4 Television broadcast coverage of the Turner Prize, during which three more K Foundation adverts were broadcast — these announced the "amending of art history".^[27] During the evening, Rachel Whiteread was announced as the winner of both the Turner Prize and the K Foundation award. Whiteread initially refused to accept the K Foundation prize, but after being told that the money would be incinerated, she reluctantly accepted, with the intention of donating £30,000 to artists in financial need and the other £10,000 to the housing charity, Shelter.^[19][28][29]

Money: A Major Body of Cash

During the buildup to the presentation of the K Foundation art award to Rachel Whiteread on 23 November 1993, the K Foundation presented their first artwork to the press. Nailed To A Wall, "the first of a series of K Foundation art installations that will also include one million pounds in a skip, one million pounds on a table and several variants on the theme of Tremendous Amounts Of Folding", consisted of one million pounds in £50 notes, nailed to a large framed board.^[26] Nailed To A Wall had a reserve price of £500,000, half the face value of the cash used in its construction, which Scotland on Sunday's reporter Robert Dawson Scott was "fairly confident... really was £1 million [in cash]". The catalogue entry for the artwork stated: "Over the years the face value will be eroded by inflation, while the artistic value will rise and rise. The precise point at which the artistic value will overtake the face value is unknown. Deconstruct the work now and you double your money. Hang it on a wall and watch the face value erode, the market value fluctuate, and the artistic value soar. The choice is yours."^[30]

Collectively, the K Foundation's money-as-art works were titled Money: A Major Body Of Cash, "seven pieces, all involving various amounts of cash nailed to, tied to or simply standing on inanimate objects".^[13] The Face magazine neatly summed up the concepts behind the art project:

If there is any overriding theme to all this unfathomable rhetoric, it's that money has become the root of all art. The questions posed in the K Foundation's first catalogue all hint at this idea: "How beautiful is money?" "Why do we try and make money measure the immeasurable?" "Have you ever shagged somebody who works in a bank?" In short, "What is money?" To add further weight to this theory, they also pull off a neat conceptual punchline. Their art is made out of cash. The face value of that cash is obvious. The artistic value, until somebody buys it and gives it artistic status, is zero. The K Foundation have put a price on these works precisely halfway between their current monetary value and their artistic value. The joke being that if you were to buy the piece called 10,000 (four piles of mint fifties nailed to a plank of salvaged skirting board) for the asking price of 5,000 (ono), you stand to pocket five grand if you destroy the art and spend the money. Alternatively, hang it on your wall and see the cash value eroded by inflation while the artistic value soars. It's the sale of the century!^[19]

During the first half of 1994, the K Foundation attempted to interest galleries in staging Money: A Major Body Of Cash. However, even old friend

On 23 August 1994, in a boathouse on the Scottish island of

Reid admitted to first feeling shock and guilt about the burning, which quickly turned to boredom. The money took well over an hour to burn as Drummond and Cauty fed £50 notes into the fire. Drummond later said that only about £900,000 of the money was actually burnt – the rest flew straight up the chimney.[33] The press reported that an islander handed £1,500 into the police; the money had not been claimed and would be returned to the finder.^[34][35]

On 23 August 1995, exactly one year after the burning, Drummond and Cauty returned to Jura for the premiere screening of the film,

On 5 November 1995, Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond signed a contract with the rest of the world agreeing to end the K Foundation for a period of 23 years. This postponement provides opportunity of sufficient length for an accurate and appropriately executed response to their 'burning of a million quid'. The K Foundation's fate now lies irrevocably sealed in the imploded remains of a Nissan Bluebird nestling among the rocks 600 feet below Cape Wrath, Scotland.^[42][43]

The final act of the K Foundation was distributing a van load of

Drummond and Cauty - reunited as The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu under the auspices of K2 Plant Hire Ltd - ended the moratorium on 23 August 2017, 23 years after the burning.[46]^[47] "Why Did the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid?" was debated during a three-day festival celebrating the launch of their novel 2023: A Trilogy.^[48] In the intervening period, the duo had worked together in 1997, when they attempted to "Fuck the Millennium" as 2K (music)^[49] and K2 Plant Hire (conceptual art).^[50]

Omnibus documentary

In November 1995, the BBC aired an edition of the

• Anti-art

Notes and references