Ikon Gallery

Angolan artist Nastio Mosquito is one of the most energetic and versatile artists of his generation. Using music, photography, film and performance poetry, Mosquito comments on the nature of our globalised world.

His videos, which often dwell on contemporary art and its role in society, are knowingly politically-incorrect, referencing post-colonial clichés in a way that is both smart and funny. For Ikon, he proposes a sprawling site-specific installation.

Ikon invites five artists from each of its five decades to return to the gallery, presenting works in the Tower Room.

John Salt’s 1965 exhibition of photorealist paintings was the very first for Ikon, whilst Ian Emes’ 1973 film animation heralded the start of a brilliant career visualising the music of Pink Floyd.

Cornelia Parker worked with Ikon throughout the late 1980s, her 1988 show including the seminal work Thirty Pieces of Silver. Yinka Shonibare formed part of a generation of young British artists who energised the art world, exhibiting sculpture and installation at Ikon in 1999.

Lastly, Julian Opie’s instantly recognisable works filled Ikon and its surroundings in 2001.

A survey of Ikon’s programme from 1978 to 1989, Ikon 1980s is a highlight of our 50th anniversary year.

Following on from The Best Things in Life Happen Accidentally and This Could Happen to You - surveys of the 1960s and 1970s respectively (2004, 2009) - this is the third chapter in an ongoing account of art shown by the gallery since it opened in 1964.

The comprehensive selection of paintings, sculpture, installation, film and photography reviews a pivotal decade in British art history through the lens of a major British visual arts institution, highlighting the rise of postmodernism and the increasing popularity of installation. Ikon 1980s includes the work of such artists as Cornelia Parker, Vanley Burke, Helen Chadwick and Susan Hiller.

Ikon invites five artists from each of its five decades to return to the gallery, presenting works in the Tower Room.

John Salt’s 1965 exhibition of photorealist paintings was the very first for Ikon, whilst Ian Emes’ 1973 film animation heralded the start of a brilliant career visualising the music of Pink Floyd.
Cornelia Parker worked with Ikon throughout the late 1980s, her 1988 show including the seminal work Thirty Pieces of Silver. Yinka Shonibare formed part of a generation of young British artists who energised the art world, exhibiting sculpture and installation at Ikon in 1999.

Lastly, Julian Opie’s instantly recognisable works filled Ikon and its surroundings in 2001.

This is the first UK solo exhibition for Lee Bul (b. 1964, Korea), considered one of the most important artists of her generation.

Lee Bul’s work is as visually compelling as it is intellectually sharp, preoccupied especially with gender politics and idealism expressed through modernism, science fiction and the development of technology.

This judicious survey includes early drawings, photographs and video (documenting performance), more sculptural pieces from the 1990s and ambitious later installations, including a new commission made possible through the Art Fund International scheme.

This latter piece, a suspended sculpture dripping with an excess of crystalline shapes and glass beads, references the exponential growth and unsustainability of the modern world, pointing up Lee Bul’s interest in the failings of utopian optimism.

Imran Qureshi is Deutsche Bank’s 2013 ‘Artist of the Year’. Born in 1972 in Pakistan, he studied in Lahore at the National College of Arts with a major in miniature painting, a traditional discipline that he teaches there today.

Qureshi is one of the most important contemporary artists on the Subcontinent, not least because he reclaims the regionally and historically rooted discipline of miniature painting and transports it to the present day.

His work constitutes a unique synthesis of the genre’s motifs and techniques with current issues and the formal language of contemporary abstract painting. Qureshi incorporates personal observations on current affairs in Pakistan into his work, reiterating that violence can be encountered not only in his native country, but throughout the world.