Critical opinion regarding the merits of John Latham's art and ideas remains divided, nevertheless there is a significant body of opinion in Europe and the United States which maintains that he is one of Britain's most radical avant-garde artists of the post-Second World War era, that he is a figure comparable in stature to Joseph Beuys or Robert Rauschenberg. Art historians also acknowledge that he has made

important contributions to such international tendencies as Tachism, Assemblage, Performance, Installation, Book and Conceptual art. The record shows that he has added terms to the vocabulary of art - for instance, 'time-based arts' and \u2018event structure'.

The sheer variety of art forms and media in which he has worked, the many new departures and initiatives he has pursued, and the originality of his thought, has stimulated the imagination of successive generations. Since the 1960s there has not been a decade in which Latham has not influenced and/or inspired British art students and younger artists. Today, artists such as John Stezaker, Douglas Gordon and Richard Wentworth are happy to acknowledge a debt to Latham. Even his contemporary Richard Hamilton has remarked:'We owe him'. Latham is now [1997] in his seventies, but he continues to produce new works and to fine tune his theories; thus his work remains relevant - which is why it continues to be displayed alongside that of much younger artists in mixed exhibitions such as Material Culture (London: Hayward Gallery, 1997). And, given the recent intense public interest in scientific theories about the origin and character of the universe, Latham's cosmological ideas are currently pertinent.

clearly physical constructions/art objects suitable for displaying in art galleries. However, viewers would gravely misjudge Latham's achievement and purpose if they relied on these two works alone as evidence. This is because his oeuvre encompasses films and videos, street events involving towers of burning books,

Furthermore, although Latham has made numerous artefacts, the primary emphases of his art since 1954 have been on time and event rather than space and matter. Latham is unusual among British artists in having a long-standing interest in scientific theories, especially those of quantum physics, gravity and cosmology. He has developed a theory of time and structure-in-events that challenges those put forward by professional physicists and cosmologists.

Consequently, his art and writings embody ideas that he regards as vital to humankind. In short, he is an artist with a message and a mission. So convinced is he of the significance of his discoveries that he is willing to address them not only to the art world but also to the Queen of England, British Prime Ministers and the Secretary General of the United Nations. He argues that instead of thinking of the universe as consisting of solid things made from small units of matter such as atoms, we should think of it as consisting of events made from various units of time, the smallest being defined as 'a least event', and the largest being the whole lifespan of the cosmos. Everything between the micro and the macro has different durations. Impressions of persistence and permanence are caused by events recurring. The temporal emerges from state zero or nothing (no thing), a ground that is invisible and atemporal, which religious believers call God. (This explains Latham's apparently absurd equation 'Everything = Nothing'. Thus Latham's formula 01-10 describes one cycle of a cosmos's existence: from nothing an event occurs, it repeats, but then reverts to nothing. Another cycle may then happen.) The dialectic between