1993

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Materials: Paper

The 1994 K Foundation award was an award given by the K Foundation (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) to the "worst artist of the year". The shortlist for the £40,000 K Foundation award was identical to the shortlist for the well-established but controversial £20,000 Turner Prize for the best British contemporary artist. On the evening of 23 November 1993, Rachel Whiteread was presented with the 1993 Turner Prize inside London's Tate Gallery, and the 1994 K Foundation award on the street outside.

Prior to presenting their award, the K Foundation held a private exhibit of a collection of art works entitled Money - A Major Body of Cash. The award, the exhibition and the accompanying extravagant press junket were widely reported by the media.

In June 1993 the newly formed K Foundation began taking out full page national press adverts. Initial advertisements were cryptic, referring to "K Time" and advising readers to "Kick out the clocks". They mentioned five-year journeys which included pop success and deep space travel and that "the sands of time are running in". There was also an advert for the K Foundation's single "K Cera Cera" which was "Available nowhere ... no formats" and which was not planned for release until world peace was established.

There was a change of direction with the fourth advert which appeared on 14 August 1993, reading: "ABANDON ALL ART NOW. Major rethink in progress. Await further announcements." The next ad (28 August 1993) read: "It has come to our attention that you did not abandon all art now. Further direct action is thus necessary. The K Foundation announce the 'mutha of all awards', the 1994 K Foundation award for the worst artist of the year." It then went on to detail how a shortlist of four artists had been chosen, and that they would be exhibited in the Tate Gallery.

“Most of the people who wrote about what we did, and the TV programme that was made about it, made a mistake. I was only able to articulate it to myself afterwards with hindsight. They thought we were using our money to make a statement about art, and really what we were doing was using our art to make a statement about money. Having arrived at that formula, I'm probably manipulating everything we did to fit into the theory, but we were just getting up in the morning and getting on the phone with each other and saying, fucking hell! So at some points we thought we were attacking the art establishment then we were saying, no that's not what this is about.” – Bill Drummond (Watson, B., "King Boy D", The Wire, March 1997)