Today comprised of Michael Baldwin (born in 1945) and Mel Ramsden (born in 1944), Art & Language first saw the light in 1967 in Great-Britain, on the initiative of four artists; Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin and Harold Hurrell met in 1966, while they were teaching art in Coventry.
They began to work on common art projects, and the idea of founding an art review quickly emerged. Art-Language’s first issue was published in 1969 and, the collective inherited its name. Charles Harrison (1942-2009) and Mel Ramsden joined the group in 1970.
Between the late 1960’s and the early 1980’s, over fifty artists and art critics from Britain associated with Art & Language.
In the 1970’s, while the artists and editors’ teaching practice developed, the review’s distribution expanded. In 1972, Art & Language exhibited the Index 01 installation at Documenta in Kassel (Germany).
Art & Language is a fluctuating collective of conceptual artists that promotes theorical exchanges between all its members. They all share common convictions, based on the idea that conceptual art is a form of criticism of modernism as an institutionalised system.