Nought to Sixty: 5 May - 2 November 2008 @ the ICA
The Scottish Arts Council, along with Culture Ireland and The Henry Moore Foundation is supporting 'Nought to Sixty,' a programme of events and exhibitions of work by emerging artists.
"The ICA is proud to present Nought to Sixty, one of the major components in our 60th anniversary celebrations. The Nought to Sixty season has a strong communal and discursive aspect, and emphasises the ICA’s founding role as a club for artists and a laboratory for experimentation. The programme is intended as a space where artists can present and discuss their work on their own terms – fostering a dialogue among themselves and with a broader public.
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ICA’s 2 Upper Galleries feature exhibitions by Babak Ghazi, Nina Canell and Robin Watkins, Alastair MacKinven and Seamus Harahan. In May, they feature performance works by Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth (in collaboration with the Boyle Family) and Aileen Campbell. |
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The ICA wants to encourage debate about the range of forces that make up a healthy art scene, and the programme includes a series of monthly salon discussions. Each month there will also be an extended essay: for May, independent curator and writer Lisa Le Feuvre examines the place of Nought to Sixty within the history of the ICA. Each month will also feature a gazetteer of resources, while future editions will examine other regions and activities.
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Research for Nought to Sixty was led by the ICA’s Richard Birkett, and we have been helped by a wide range of advisors and other collaborators. We feel that the current programme is a worthy inheritor of the ICA’s long-standing role as a champion of emerging art and artists, and are confident that the project will grow in strength the more people it involves. "
Mark Sladen Director of Exhibitions, ICA |
Nought to Sixty is a programme of exhibitions and events at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. It presents sixty projects by emerging artists based in Britain and Ireland, and is held over six months from 5 May to 2 November 2008.
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Most of the artists in Nought to Sixty are under thirty-five, few of them have had significant commercial exposure, and in most cases this is their first opportunity to mount a solo project in a major public space.
The season is not intended to announce any new generation or style, but to build up a multifaceted portrait of the emerging art scene in the two countries, and to provide a space for exchange. |
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The Nought to Sixty programme consists of:
• Week-long exhibitions in the ICA’s Upper Galleries.
• Performances, screenings and talks in the ICA’s other spaces.
• Other projects off-site. Events are happening at the ICA every Monday night:
• Special exhibition viewings every Monday from 7 to 10pm.
• Performances, screenings and talks on Mondays at 8pm.
• All Monday night events are free.
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Events are being announced monthly through this magazine and online.
For full information on all events, artists, opening times and to sign up for e-invites, please visit the ICA website. |
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Nought to Sixty: Some Paradoxes and Parameters
At the heart of the Institute of Contemporary Arts is a paradox that has been embraced since its inception some sixty years ago. The ICA came into being in 1947, imagined by its founders – Herbert Read, Roland Penrose, ELT Mesens and Peter Watson – as a discursive site that would operate as “a laboratory rather than a museum”. The organisation deliberately positioned itself as both generative of and responsive to the present, existing as a hub of potential with an orthodoxy of disagreement and counter-argument. Naming itself, in an apparently contradictory way, as both an ‘institution’ and as ‘contemporary’, the ICA set out to be an alternative to what was deemed the dominant culture – at that time conceived largely as the Tate Gallery, the British Council and the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts. The difficult double role of being a thorn in the side of the establishment while being a clearly identified institution has continued to define the ICA...
Lisa Le Feuvre | |