ABSTRACT
In the mid-1980s, radical changes in fine art education were initiated by Keith Joseph, founder of the right-wing think tank the Centre for Policy Studies and Secretary of State for Education in the Thatcher administration. The tiger shark was one of many attempts made by Hirst to make art that was more 'real', leaving things in a state as close as possible to how they might be found in nature. Given the changes that took place in the British artworld in the late 1970s relating to the assisted co-option of the 'avant-garde' by the managerial impetus of Semio-Art, such claims make little sense. Artist initiatives in Scotland such as Transmission, New 57 Gallery and the Collective Gallery had, rightly or wrongly, long been characterized as democratic and philanthropic, asserting a model of the artist as organized, politicized and active. Other Scottish artists in the early '90s had continued to work in territories which were less confined by globalizing corporatist institutions.
