A sculptor who fashioned rotting flesh, human faeces and vomit (Kenneth Hutcheson), a film director with a fridge’s-eye view of New York (Richard Bradley-Hudd), a conceptualist artist designing biodegradable houses in the forests of Bavaria (Hannah Patrizio), and a radical Scots author claiming to have “redefined the novel” (Laura Mason).
This was the quartet of ‘talents’ who comprised four of the five parts of a Channel 4 series. In the fifth programme, they met with presenter Muriel Gray for a final overview.
As the discussion became extremely heated, sculptor Kenneth Hutcheson turned on Ms Gray, yelled, “You’re nothing but a failed artist and a failed TV presenter”, and threw a glass of red wine over her.
When the programme ended, it turned out that the series – which had originally been titled Emperor’s New Clothes (bit of a giveaway) – was all a hoax.
The so-called artists were, respectively, a computer salesman, an architect, an antiques dealer and a beautician.
It seems Gray had set up the whole series to show that, “whether it’s real or not, as soon as it’s on the telly, it’s elevated.”
“TV programmes falsify truth and information all the time. To me, art is so important that, without it, we would cop it. I don’t like to see it undervalued or devalued by the duplicity of programme makers.”
Even when some of the newspapers then proceeded to round on Gray for perpetrating the spoof, she took much satisfaction in the fact that, in the course of the series, various critics had taken the programmes very seriously – some even claiming to have heard of the artists in the spotlight.
When the programme ended, it turned out that the series – which had originally been titled Emperor’s New Clothes (bit of a giveaway) – was all a hoax.
