To mark the ICA’s 60th anniversary, a series of talks will look back at the dominant curatorial approaches of the ICA’s history, questioning their continued relevance today and looking at the possibility of their revival. The series takes key exhibitions and themes from the ICA’s past as the starting point for discussion at each talk, which will take place over the coming months. Transcripts from the talks will form the basis of a publication to be released at the end of the series.

The first two talks have now been annouced:

Political manifesto as curatorial project
Tuesday 27th November, 7pm, ICA

The ICA played host to the politically controversial Unknown Political Prisoner exhibition in 1953, offered solidarity in the early 60s to LA artists protesting against Vietnam, and most recently invited artists’ proposals for a Memorial to the Iraq War (2007). In a time which is often described as apathetic, but which has also seen some of the biggest anti-war demonstrations ever, should contemporary politics be the domain of the curator?

Speakers include: artist Liam Gillick, contributor to Memorial to the Iraq War; Mark Nash, head of curating contemporary art, Royal College of Art, and co-curator Documenta 11 (2002); Sophie Hope, co-founder B+B, co-curator, Real Estate for London in Six Easy Steps (2005); Will Bradley, co-curator, Forms of Resistance: Artists and the desire for social change from 1871 to the present, Van Abbemuseum; Polish-born, London-based artist Marysia Lewandowska, who has collaborated with Neil Cummings since 1995, and whose recent Enthusiasm project explored, through amateur films made by Polish factory workers under socialism, the potential of working outside ‘official’ culture. The discussion will be chaired by Andrew Brighton, writer, contributing editor to Critical Quarterly and painter.

The Artist-curator: curators as artists and artists as curators
Tuesday 11th December, 7pm, ICA

The postwar era fundamentally altered the way in which the public interacted with art. One of the most visible changes was the emergence of the artist from studio to exhibition space. Key exhibitions of the late 50s, such as This is Tomorrow (Whitechapel, 1956) and Parallel of Life and Art (ICA, 1953) saw artists and architects collaborating on exhibition stands and curatorial models. This fluid positioning has resulted in some of the most interesting exhibitions in the contemporary British art scene, and recently, due to pressures both creative and economic, the rise in the artist-run space. Many questions remain unanswered: is there a fundamental difference of position between artist and curator? Do we need curators at all? Should the curator be considered an artist?

Speakers include: Mark Sladen, ICA director of exhibitions; Jeremy Millar, artist and AHRC Research Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, and curator of The Institute of Cultural Anxiety - Works from the Collection’ at the ICA in 1994; Gavin Wade, Director of Eastside Projects, Birmingham; Siobhan Wootton, co-director and curator of Alma Enterprises, an artist/curator run space on Vyner Street; Dr. Cameron Cartiere, Director of Doctoral Research for the Faculty of Lifelong Learning at Birkbeck College, and MA course director for the department of Arts Policy & Management.

For further details about both of these talks, and to book tickets, go to the ICA’s website.

The talks have been developed by London Consortium student Ben Cranfield and the ICA’s Talks Department, and are organised in association with the London Consortium.