Institute of Contemporary Arts

Installed on the roof of the ICA’s Regency building from 15 March 2013, Flag (Union Jack) by New York-based contemporary artist Frank Benson reflects the artist's ongoing fascination with the depiction of arrested motion and the use of digital tools in the creation of sculpture.

To create this work, an image of the Union Flag (commonly called the Union Jack) of the United Kingdom was mapped onto a three-dimensional plane created in a computer animation programme. The plane was then subjected to simulated wind and turbulence, and a still from the animation was chosen as the pattern of the sewn nylon flag. Even when flat, these manipulations give the flag the appearance of billowing in high wind – contorting and disfiguring its stripes while remaining implausibly constrained to a rectangle. Benson in this way confuses the distinction between the flag as image and the flag as object. The rippled appearance of the Union Jack when it is flown – an unintentional consequence of climate – has been intentionally translated onto the flag’s design.

National flags, particularly the Union Jack, are a frequent sight around the ICA on the Mall in central London. The road is a focal point of state occasions, during which national flags line the route. Flag (Union Jack) dramatically magnifies, and subtly mutates, these stately insignia.

The installation is the third sculpture to be displayed on the roof of Nash House. The first was Roberto Cuoghi’s Šuillakku in 2008 and the second was Franz West's Room in London in 2011.

Suitable for

Admission

Free

To coincide with the 60th anniversary of the ground-breaking exhibition Parallel of Life & Art, this exhibition presents original art works by the Independent Group.

The Independent Group met at the original ICA in Dover Street from 1952-5 and comprised architects Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling and Colin St John Wilson
artists Magda Cordell, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, John McHale, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull
music producer Frank Cordell and writers Lawrence Alloway, Reyner Banham and Toni del Renzio. Celebrated today as the so-called Fathers of Pop, the Group worked with art, science, technology and popular culture. From horror films to theories of evolution, modern architecture to Marilyn Monroe, this group project worked beyond traditional boundaries and conventional disciplinary areas.

The exhibitions organised by the group – Growth & Form
Tomorrow’s Furniture
Parallel of Life & Art
Man, Machine & Motion and sections of This is Tomorrow – were highly innovative, both in terms of layout and the range of objects displayed. Building on the ICA’s Surrealist legacy, the Independent Group shows introduced the new age of modernity and mass culture to the gallery space. Reflecting the Group’s collage mentality, new technology and high end design were juxtaposed with avant-garde art.

Unlike other London venues, "none provided a foyer, a hearth which the artists and his audience can gather in unanimity, in fellowship, in mutual understanding and inspiration", stated Herbert Read in the exhibition catalogue 40 Years of Modern Art. Even before the Group was assembled by Assistant Director Dorothy Morland, members gravitated to the ICA as the only place to see and discuss modern art and modern culture. Hamilton, Paolozzi and Turnbull exhibited at the Dover Street inaugural exhibition, 1950: Aspects of British Art and continued their involvement throughout the 1950s and 1960s, curating a wide range of public exhibitions and events, underpinned by clandestine discussions and gatherings.

The ICA exhibition will include paintings, drawings and photographs by John McHale, Magda Cordell, Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, alongside related designed objects and ephemera from the Independent Group. Evoking the ICA’s original home in Dover Street in the 1950s, the exhibition will be designed to give viewers a sense of ‘The Home of the Avant Garde’ which first attracted this collection of creative practitioners.

In addition the exhibition will be accompanied by a two day conference which will bring together leading researchers, practitioners and curators who are working on aspects of the Independent Group. The aim will be to consider ways in which the Independent Group have been, and continue to be, exhibited. Participants will share their knowledge and approaches to this seminal moment in the history of British art and architecture at a very timely moment when the history of the Independent Group has come under increased scrutiny internationally.

Suitable for

Admission

Free

Bernadette Corporation's first UK retrospective, this exhibition presents works authored by the group since their inception in the early '90s.

Beginning with the organisation of parties in downtown New York, their mock incorporation and ambiguous branding strategies developed between 1995 and 1997 into a women’s fashion line, engaging in quotation, provocation, hoaxes, and anti-artistic postures of crass commercialism.

Suitable for

• 16-17
• 18+

Admission

Free.

Website

http://www.ica.org.uk/35536/Exhibitions/Bernadette-Corporation-2000-Wasted-Years.html

Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) explores how artists since the 1940s to the present day have used drawing to address ideas critical and current to their time, ranging from the politics of gender and sexuality to feminist issues, war, censorship and race. Stretching from fashion to erotica, the works can all be viewed as being in some way transgressive, employing traditional and commercial drawing techniques to challenge specific social, political or stylistic conventions.

The exhibition brings together the work of eight artists: Judith Bernstein, Tom of Finland, George Grosz, Margaret Harrison, Mike Kuchar, Cary Kwok, Antonio Lopez and Marlene McCarty.

Curated by Sarah McCrory, the exhibition draws on the way artists turned to the commercial realms of comics, fashion and illustration to revitalise drawing within the visual arts - many of the works in Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) were originally produced for a commercial context. One common aspect of these varied practices is a high level of technical skill - these are artists who often confounded critics of their subject matter unable to condemn their technique. Choosing to step outside the boundaries of social acceptability, the works in Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) comprise modest proposals and trenchant political gestures.

Suitable for

Admission

Free

Points of Departure features new commissions resulting from six residencies in London and Ramallah by British and Palestinian artists: Jumana Emil Abboud, Bashar Alhroub, Bisan Abu Eisheh, Jeremy Hutchison, Olivia Plender, and Nathan Witt. Devised with two curators-in-residence, Mirna Bamieh and Rebecca Heald, the works in Points of Departure are a thoughtful exploration of the anthropological concept of liminality. From the Latin word l?men, meaning ‘a threshold’, liminality is a condition in which one’s sense of identity is diffused, leading not only to states of dislocation and disorientation, but also to the possibility of new perspectives. Residencies can also be understood as a ‘liminal’ state between time and place. But what happens when the liminality of the residency is entwined with a place like Palestine, which is defined by its own political ambiguity and contestation?

In the face of globalisation, but without succumbing to false universalism, all Points of Departure artists undertook varieties of research to reveal a range of partial truths. In this exhibition they are presented in different mediums including performance, video, installation, drawings, and intervention.

Following the presentation of the first outcomes of Points of Departure in Ramallah in January and February 2013, the exhibition travels in an expanded form to the ICA, as one of the highlights of the 2013 Shubbak Festival in London.

Suitable for

Admission

Free