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| Established | 1965; 60 years ago (1965) |
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| Location | Brindleyplace,Birmingham |
| Coordinates | 52°28′N1°55′W / 52.47°N 1.91°W /52.47; -1.91 |
| Type | Contemporary art |
| Website | ikon-gallery |
TheIkon Gallery (grid referenceSP060866) is anEnglishgallery ofcontemporary art, located inBrindleyplace,Birmingham. It is housed in theGrade II listed,neo-Gothic formerOozells Street Board School, designed byJohn Henry Chamberlain in 1877.
Ikon was set up to encourage the public to engage in contemporary art. As a result, the gallery delivers an off-site Education and Interpretation scheme to educate audiences, and to promote artists and their work. The gallery is open every day of the week except Mondays, though it opens onbank holiday Mondays.
Featured artworks include all forms of media including sound,sculpture andphotography as well aspaintings. Exhibitions rotate throughout the year so that as many pieces can be displayed as possible. Ikon is aregistered charity which is partly funded byBirmingham City Council andArts Council of England.[1]
"The Ikon" (as it is colloquially known) was founded by art collectorAngus Skene and four artists from theBirmingham School of Art,David Prentice,Sylvani Merilion,Jesse Bruton andRobert Groves. The collection began after Skene bought Prentice's paintingKate and the Waterlilies in 1964, and the two started discussions about the lack of support for contemporary artists provided by Birmingham's existing artistic institutions.[2] The gallery was originally conceived as a "gallery without walls", with exhibitions planned to tour unconventional locations such ascinemas andpost offices in amotorcycle sidecar[3] The gallery was then eventually established in 1965 in an octagonal glass-walled kiosk in Birmingham's then-newBull Ring shopping centre. The gallery's first exhibition displayed work byJohn Salt. The venue was then staffed by the founding artists and sometimes their spouses on a voluntary basis.
The gallery's venture was funded by Skene, but organisational control of the gallery was left in the hands of the artists.[4] The name of the gallery was coined by Groves, who was interested in theicons of theEastern Orthodox Church. The name was agreed by the other founders partly on the basis that it "divides beautifully geometrically and was splendid in all directions".[5] In Ikon's founding prospectus it declares:
"Ikon is intended as an antithesis to exclusive art establishments and galleries … it has been formed because of the need for an accessible place where the exchange of visual ideas can become a familiar reality"[6]
The lease on the kiosk expired after three years, but with Arts Council support the gallery was able to move to the former mortuary in the basement of Queens College in Swallow Street in 1968 and appointed Jeanette Koch as gallery manager.[3] During the next 4 years Ikon held 93 exhibitions and 40 group shows,[6] by which time the lease on the Swallow Street premises came to an end. Under the direction of Simon Chapman (who had previously run theBirmingham Arts Lab) assisted by Jeanette Koch, the gallery embarked on an ambitious expansion of broadening the exhibition programme to include the works of nationally and internationally recognised artists, and to move to a busier location in order to gain greater interest from a wider public. In the autumn of 1972, with increased financial support ofThe Arts Council together with new funding from West Midlands Arts Association, TheGulbenkian Foundation and a number of local charitable trusts and industry, Ikon re-located in The Birmingham Shopping Centre, a newly built shopping mall aboveNew Street station. The fitting out of the gallery was designed by Walter Thomson ofAssociated Architects and provided a space four times larger than the Swallow Street gallery and virtually forty times larger than the original Bull Ring kiosk. The number of visitors to the gallery rocketed into the hundreds and on occasions peaked at over a thousand a day providing many with their first opportunity of seeing modern and contemporary art by living artists. The opening show of large chalk on blackboard wall drawings byJohn Walker firmly established Birmingham as a city with a gallery devoted to the contemporary visual arts.
During the next 6 years, Ikon became positioned as one of the most important contemporary art galleries outside London, attracting both exhibitors and visitors from far beyond the city. Among the artists who had solo exhibitions wereIvor Abrahams, Allen Barker,Barry Burman,John Copnall,Vaughan Grylls, Trevor Halliday,David Hepher, Harry Holland, David Leveritt, John Mitchell,John Salt, Peter Sedgely,David Shepherd,William Tillyer and Roger Westwood. Notable group shows included Midland Art Now featuring the work of 20 of the most prominent Midlands based artists including Roy Abell,Barrie Cook, John Farrington, Dick French,William Gear, Colin Hitchmough,John Melville,David Prentice and Peter Tarrant, and which was accompanied by a full colour printed broadsheet catalogue distributed free to the 40,000 readers of theBirmingham Post. Beyond Destination, a show curated byIan Iqbal Rashid and featuring contemporary South Asian artists includingSutapa Biswas andAlia Syed went on to tour internationally.[7] Ikon replaced theBirmingham Museum and Art Gallery as the venue for travelling exhibitions of contemporary art such asDiane Arbus curated byJohn Szarkowski,Chris Orr curated by Nick Serota, Objects and Documents featuring works selected byRichard Smith, An Element of Landscape curated byJeremy Rees, The Human Clay featuring works selected byR. B. Kitaj, andBerenice Abbott.
By 1978, Ikon had again outgrown its premises and it moved to a former carpet shop in John Bright Street adjacent to theAlexandra Theatre.[8]
The gallery moved to its current site, the formerOozells Street Board School, in 1997 with the cost of the conversion partly funded by a grant from theNational Lottery. The refurbishment work was designed byLevitt Bernstein, who reinstated the building's tower, which had been demolished during the 1960s. Café Ikon, on the ground floor, was designed by Birmingham-based architects The Space Studio and opened in December 1998. Form, Space & Order were thecontractors.[9]
In 2011, the Ikon Gallery started work withGillian Wearing, to create apublic artwork of 'A Real Birmingham Family'. The consequentbronze cast sculpture was erected inCentenary Square, outside theLibrary of Birmingham, on 30 October 2014.
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In July 2006, Ikon opened a second site in theDigbeth area of Birmingham, known asIkon Eastside.[10] It was housed in a Victorian former chapel and Sunday school, with the words "Stay away from Lonely Places" prominently displayed on the façade - an artwork by Canadian artistRon Terada.[11]
This venue closed in summer 2007, but the gallery opened a gallery in a different building a short distance away in May 2008.[12][13] After being part of the Fazeley Studios complex it closed permanently in 2011.[14]
The Ikon has an artistic programme consisting of three interdependent strands.
Ikon is alimited company, registered as an educational charity. Ikon receives core funding fromArts Council West Midlands andBirmingham City Council and raises additional income from a variety of sources, including charitable trusts and foundations and corporate sponsorship.
The gallery's executive comprises Ian Hyde, Acting Chief Executive, Melanie Pocock, Acting Artistic Director, Exhibitions and Dr Linzi Stauvers, Acting Artistic Director, Education.[15]
Solo exhibitions since 2000 includeSantiago Sierra,[17]On Kawara,[18]Roy Arden,[19]Marcel Dzama,[20]Olafur Eliasson,[21]Simon Patterson,[22]Richard Billingham,[23]Julian Opie,[24]Cornelia Parker,[25] andHaroon Mirza (November 2018 — February 2019)[26]
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52°28′39″N1°54′45″W / 52.4776°N 1.9125°W /52.4776; -1.9125
