CategoriesStyles and Movements
Colab
Collaborative Projects, a New York artists' group founded in 1977 that organised its own shows, films and publications outside official channels.
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About
Collaborative Projects, or Colab, began in 1977 as a way for dozens of young New York artists to pool money, apply for grants and produce their own exhibitions, films and cable-television programmes. Members shared an interest in politics, cheap materials and the life of the city's poorer neighbourhoods.
Two exhibitions around 1980 made its name. On New Year's Eve 1979 members occupied an empty city-owned building on the Lower East Side for The Real Estate Show; after police shut it, negotiations led to the founding of ABC No Rio. In June 1980 The Times Square Show filled a former massage parlour with work by more than a hundred artists, including graffiti writers, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Members went in many directions: Jenny Holzer's street posters, Christy Rupp's rat posters pasted around Manhattan, John Ahearn's painted plaster casts of South Bronx neighbours, and Charlie Ahearn's hip-hop film Wild Style (1983).