The name Art & Language was first used in 1968 by the British artists Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin and Harold Hurrell, who had been collaborating on works since around 1966, and who were at that time teaching art in Coventry. Their early work, as well as their journal Art-Language which first appeared in 1969, is regarded as an important influence on much conceptual art both in the United Kingdom and in the United States.
In the early 1970s Ian Burn, Michael Corris, Charles Harrison, Preston Heller, Joseph Kosuth Andrew Menard, Mel Ramsden and Terry Smith joined the group and worked under its name. Art & Language produced a good deal of art as well as theoretical writings, though by the end of the 1970s the group was essentially reduced to Baldwin, Harrison and Ramsden.
Art & Language exhibited in the international Documenta exhibitions of 1972, 1982 and 1997. In 1986, the group was nominated for the Turner Prize.