The Independent in London celebrates the 10th Anniversary of Counter Editions, the firm that brought the rowdy YBA to a broader audience:

As the defining decade of the enfant terrible was drawing to a close, Carl Freedman – one-time boyfriend of Emin, former flatmate of Hirst and curator of the first east-London warehouse exhibitions of the late 1980s – decided that it was time to make desirable contemporary art more widely available.

Freedman’s plan was not just to sell pieces at an affordable price; he also wanted to bring work to those who wouldn’t otherwise have access. “Anyone living outside London,” he says, “couldn’t have seen, let alone got their hands on, a lot of this work, even if they had the money to buy it.” In order to redress the balance, Freedman founded an online gallery selling one-off pieces by sought-after artists at relatively affordable prices. Continue Reading