Headless Yard

A group of avant-garde artists romp, hustle, and swindle their way to the top of the 90s London art scene, in this riotously funny new novel for readers of Miranda July and Rachel Kushner

After Kate Endish is accepted into the prestigious Grove School of Art, she finally achieves her dreams: dropping out of university to join a ragtag group of eccentric artists in a ramshackle warehouse in Hackney, changing the world one bricolage at a time. They are Headless Yard, five hot-headed, bold visionaries aiming to drag art back to life, and get filthy rich in the process.

Threatening to thwart them are market forces, artistic rivalry, personal integrity and the passions of love – or rather, their foul-mouthed parrot, the junkies downstairs, the asbestos lining the walls and their jaded art dealer. Secretly, Kate reckons the only one worth their salt is Lubbock – still into figurative painting and stubbornly immune to the lure of money and fame.

As the 90s progress in an art and drug-fuelled haze, the group cover countless magazines, win and lose big, and court outrage and scandal. Yet as the millennium draws to a close and the group begins to splinter, Kate begins to wonder: are any of them even true artists, and what is it all for?