Road Trip!!
Well train ride actually!
Managed to squeeze a visit to the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham into the weekly budget. Very interesting building, not too far from New Street train station, caught up with a few other students and bumped into a couple of lecturers as well!
Ikon is a small and interesting gallery inside a traditional red brick Victorian building [and former boarding school]. It is surrounded by similar historical institutes, modern concrete blocks and the latest 21st century designs like the library is just along the road.
We were there to see ‘Horror in the Modernist Block’.
This is “an exhibition featuring new and recent work by 20 UK and international and contemporary artists”.
“Modernist architecture is often associated with the horror genre. In fiction and film, high-rise towers, concrete estates and glass pavilions form the backdrop to terrifying stories of dystopia”
The exhibition contained a mixture of installations, film, sculpture photography, drawing and printmaking. It links ‘brutalist’ architecture with suspense, darkness and elements of fear amongst modernist design and the trauma and violence of construction and destruction of it.
Unfortunately the exhibition contained minimal photography. Most of the exhibits, even though a brief description was given in the catalogue, were beyond my comprehension.
Although, I did like the ‘Lithobolia Happy Meal’ by Richard Hughes which was comparable to a giant mobile with reconstructed lumps of ‘concrete’ and a fake ‘space hopper’ hanging from recycled trampoline parts.
Also ‘Laetitia Badaut Haussmann Espace vaincu, Energie controlee’ (Vanquished space, Controlled energy) on second glance was clever, particularly the screen print on the outer flat wall which gave the impression and perspective of a building with more angles and shadowed walls than was actually there.
Most of the exhibits didn’t resonate with me, but the Ikon is an interesting space and I will keep an eye out for future exhibitions.