Young British Artists all so known as the YBA or Brit Pack

• Many of the YBA went to Goldsmith’s college and the Royal Academy in London

• In 1988 Damian Hirst organized a show of the YBA in an alternative space in London called “Freeze”.

• The exhibit brought the YBA to the attention of London’s art and it featured 16 graduates of Goldsmith college.

• In 1992 Saatchi staged a series of exhibitions at his gallery of the YBA that also gained them critical attention.

Damien Hirst 1965-present

“Hirst explores the uncertainty at the core of human experience; love, life, death, loyalty and betrayal through unexpected and unconventional media.” Best known for the ‘Natural History’ works, which present animals in vitrines suspended in formaldehyde his works recast fundamental questions concerning the meaning of life and the fragility of biological existence. “

Tracey Emin 1963-present

Using personal experiences, Tracey Emin often reveals her own painful situations in a very honest and humorous way.

The personal expands into the universal when Emin reveals her life experiences and forms them into a genuine expression of a human emotion.

Sara Lucas 1962-present“Through her career, Lucas has continued to appropriate everyday materials to make works that use humor visual puns and sexual metaphor to discuss sex, death, Englishness and gender.”

A second wave of Young British Artists appeared in 1992-3 through

exhibitions such as 'New Contemporaries', 'New British

Summertime' and 'Minky Manky' (curated by Carl Freedman).

Fionna Banner 1966-Present• Much of Fiona Banner’s work

explores the problems and possibilities of written language. Her early work took the form of ‘wordscapes’ or ‘still films’ – blow-by-blow accounts written in her own words of feature films, (whose subjects range from war to porn) or sequences of events. These pieces took the form of solid single blocks of text, often the same shape and size as a cinema

screen.

Rachel Whiteread 1963-present

• Many of Whiteread's works are casts of ordinary domestic objects and, in numerous cases, the space the objects do not inhabit (often termed the "negative space") — instead producing a solid cast of where the space within a container would be; particular parts of rooms, the area underneath furniture, for example. She says the casts carry "the residue of years and years of use".

Douglas Gordan 1966-present

Through his work in video, photography, and sculpture, Gordon addresses and explores universal dualities: life and death, good and evil