Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London
Greater London
SW1Y 5AH
England
Website
Telephone
Tickets & information
020 7930 3647
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020 7930 6393
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020 7766 1452
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020 7930 0493
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020 7766 1413
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is a public playground for presenting challenging work across the arts and for forging innovative ways of thinking about culture.
Venue Type:
Gallery
Additional info
How to get to the ICA:
The ICA is on the Mall, at the foot of the Duke of York steps, 3 minutes from Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square.
Temporary collections are displayed throughout the year in three gallery spaces and public areas of the ICA.
A wide range of films are shown daily on two cinema screens.
Regular live performances, music events and clubnights take place in the Theatre and Bar.
An exciting range of talks, debates and discussions on everything from science to politics features on the monthly programme.
Interactive exhibitions, chatrooms, digital art, all in the New Media Centre.
Plus: education programme, private hires, Crporate hospitality, Bookshop, Bar and Cafe.
Collection details
Architecture, Costume and Textiles, Design, Film and Media, Fine Art, Literature, Music, Performing Arts, Photography, Science and Technology
Key artists and exhibits
- Annual Becks Futures art prize
- Recent exhibtions include work by Mike Nelson, M/M, Philippe Parreno, Francois Roche, Pierre Huyghe, L.A. Raeven & Annika Larsson, de Rijke / de Rooij, Fergus Greer, Richard Kern and Lothar Hempel.
Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper)
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
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
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