Ikon Gallery

David Tremlett (b. 1945) is best known for his large-scale site-specific wall drawings of geometric arrangements: abstract compositions of arcs, circles, trapezoids, text and line. Using pastel pigment applied by hand, Tremlett makes these compositions directly on architectural surfaces.

They are orchestrated to shift the viewer’s comprehension of a built environment, opening out, expanding and reducing, creating new vistas, geometric rhythms and pauses.

While at once being formally constructed compositions of purely abstract elements which emanate the sensual joy of colour, and illustrate relationships between straight and curved lines, they speak too of things experienced, seen and done by the artist.

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.

An exhibition of work by emerging artist Jamal Penjweny from Iraqi Kursdistan, including a number of photographic series that are as poignant and smart as they are formally straightforward.

Saddam is Here consists of twelve images of Iraqi people in familiar surroundings, each holding a life-size picture of Saddam Hussein’s face in front of their own. Saddam’s likeness becomes a mask obscuring any expression of emotion, any gaze, or possibility of sure identification and individuality.

It is ludicrous, hilarious and at the same time absolutely ominous, pointing up the insidious influence of a dictator. Another Life, a short film by Penjweny, follows some days in the lives of Iraqis smuggling alcohol from Iraq into Iran.

It has the grainy appeal of covert cell phone footage, and is very matter-of-fact in its editing. There is no melodrama, but the last moments are like an emotional hammerblow when, instead of rolling credits, we find ourselves reading paragraphs explaining how two of the men just introduced to us were killed by customs police a few days after filming.

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 will be the most comprehensive UK exhibition to date of work by Belgian artist Michel François (b. 1956).

Comprising sculpture, film, paintings, prints and photography, it exemplifies the artist’s conviction that the meanings of a work of art are determined through its combination with others in relation to an exhibition space.

Visitors to Ikon will encounter an installation of numerous pieces to be read as a whole, integrated with the entire building. Such pervasiveness is fitting given the fundamental proposition of François’ work whereby art and life are deemed inextricable, and making reference specifically to sculpture, he observes, “L’art, de toute façon, c’est la vie que l’on sculpte” (“Art, afterall, is life sculpted.”)

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.