Literature:

See Rebecca Dimling Cochran’s “From the Political to the Popular, An Interview with Conrad Atkinson” published in “Sculpture Magazine”, September 1998, Vol. 17, No. 7

Note:

This work was originally commissioned as billboard posters by Projects UK, co-produced with Artangel in 1987 and exhibited on the London Underground.

In the interview with R.D. Cochran, Atkinson comments:
“I think the newspaper project was a very interesting one. The first one was in 1985 and it began as a silk-screen print. Myself, Joseph Beuys, Ida Applebroog, and Komar and Melamid were commissioned by Sean Elwood. I rewrote The Wall Street Journal as if artists were very important people and as if politicians were ethical creatures motivated by things like truth and morality. Then the Whitechapel Gallery asked me to do some pictures for a show, so I painted some pictures of The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal and interspersed artists with politicians and political issues. The London group, Artangel, saw them and invited me to do some large subway posters. I suggested we enlarge The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal and put them in Bank Street and Bond Street tube stations—the financial and cultural districts.”