The Ikon Gallery () is an English gallery of

contemporary art Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...

, located in Brindleyplace,

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

. It is housed in the

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

neo-Gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century ...

former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John 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 on bank holiday Mondays. Featured artworks include all forms of media including sound,

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

and

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

as well as

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

s. Exhibitions rotate throughout the year so that as many pieces can be displayed as possible. Ikon is a

registered charity A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, Religion, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definitio ...

which is partly funded by

Birmingham City Council Birmingham City Council is the local authority for the city of Birmingham in the West Midlands, England. Birmingham has had an elected local authority since 1838, which has been reformed several times. Since 1974 the council has been a metropo ...

and Arts Council of England.

History

"The Ikon" (as it is colloquially known) was founded by art collector Angus Skene and four artists from the

Birmingham School of Art The Birmingham School of Art was a municipal art school based in the centre of Birmingham, England. Although the organisation was absorbed by Birmingham Polytechnic in 1971 and is now part of Birmingham City University's Faculty of Arts, Design a ...

, David Prentice, Sylvani Merilion, Jesse Bruton and

Robert Groves Robert Martin Groves (born September 27, 1948) is an American sociologist and survey methodology expert, currently serving as the interim president of Georgetown University since November 2024. He served as the executive vice president and prov ...

. The collection began after Skene bought Prentice's painting ''Kate 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. The gallery was originally conceived as a "gallery without walls", with exhibitions planned to tour unconventional locations such as

cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking ** Filmmaking, the process of making a film * Movie theate ...

s and

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

s in a motorcycle sidecar The gallery was then eventually established in 1965 in an octagonal glass-walled kiosk in Birmingham's then-new Bull Ring shopping centre. The gallery's first exhibition displayed work by

John Salt John Salt (2 August 1937 – 13 December 2021) was an English artist, whose greatly detailed paintings from the late 1960s onwards made him one of the pioneers of the photorealist school. Although Salt's work developed through several distin ...

. 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. The name of the gallery was coined by Groves, who was interested in the

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

s of the

Eastern Orthodox Church The Eastern Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, and also called the Greek Orthodox Church or simply the Orthodox Church, is List of Christian denominations by number of members, one of the three major doctrinal and ...

. The name was agreed by the other founders partly on the basis that it "divides beautifully geometrically and was splendid in all directions". 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"

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. During the next 4 years Ikon held 93 exhibitions and 40 group shows, by which time the lease on the Swallow Street premises came to an end. Under the direction of Simon Chapman (who had previously run the Birmingham 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 of The Arts Council together with new funding from West Midlands Arts Association, The

Gulbenkian Foundation The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (), commonly referred to simply as the Gulbenkian Foundation, is a Portuguese institution dedicated to the promotion of the arts, philanthropy, science, and education. One of the wealthiest charitable founda ...

and a number of local charitable trusts and industry, Ikon re-located in The Birmingham Shopping Centre, a newly built shopping mall above New Street station. The fitting out of the gallery was designed by Walter Thomson of

Associated Architects Associated Architects' Birmingham Offices are located in The Mailbox, which was designed by the practice RIBA Award Winner 2009, David Wilson Library Associated Architects is a leadinAJ100architectural firm with offices in Birmingham and Lee ...

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 by John 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 were

Ivor Abrahams Ivor Abrahams (10 January 1935 – 6 January 2015) was a British sculptor, ceramicist and print maker best known for his polychrome sculptures and his stylised prints of garden scenes. His career long exploration of new subject matter, novel ...

, Allen Barker,

Barry Burman Barry Burman (1943–2001) was an English figurative artist, known for his dark and often disturbing subject matter. He was an artist and teacher. He took an overdose and died aged 57. Early life Burman was born in Bedford in June 1943. He gai ...

, John Copnall,

Vaughan Grylls Vaughan Grylls is a British artist, photographer, and author. Known for his fine art photography and sculptures, Grylls first received recognition for his 1960s pun-sculptures and, later, for his 1980s photography and panoramic photo collages. ...

, Trevor Halliday, David Hepher, Harry Holland, David Leveritt, John Mitchell,

, 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 John William Melville (25 August 1902 – 8 December 1986) was a self-taught British Surrealism, Surrealist painter. He is described by Michel Remy in his book ''Surrealism in Britain'' as one of the "harbingers of surrealism" in Great Britain ...

, David Prentice and Peter Tarrant, and which was accompanied by a full colour printed broadsheet catalogue distributed free to the 40,000 readers of the

Birmingham Post The ''Birmingham Post'' is a weekly printed newspaper based in Birmingham, England, with distribution throughout the West Midlands. First published under the name the ''Birmingham Daily Post'' in 1857, it has had a succession of distinguished ...

. Beyond Destination, a show curated by

Ian Iqbal Rashid Ian Iqbal Rashid (born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and poet, known for his volumes of poetry, for his work on the Peabody Award-winning and Canadian Screen Award-winning HBO Max/ CBC TV series '' Sort Of'' (2021� ...

and featuring contemporary South Asian artists including Sutapa Biswas and Alia Syed went on to tour internationally. Ikon replaced the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery as the venue for travelling exhibitions of contemporary art such as

Diane Arbus Diane Arbus (; ; March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971
by

curated by

John Szarkowski Thaddeus John Szarkowski (December 18, 1925 – July 7, 2007) was an American photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the director of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Early life and ca ...

, Chris Orr curated by Nick Serota, Objects and Documents featuring works selected by Richard Smith, An Element of Landscape curated by Jeremy Rees, The Human Clay featuring works selected by

R. B. Kitaj Ronald Brooks Kitaj (; October 29, 1932 – October 21, 2007) was an American artist who spent much of his life in England. Life He was born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, United States. His Hungarian father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne ...

, and

Berenice Abbott Berenice Alice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her portraits of cultural figures of the interwar period, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science ...

By 1978, Ikon had again outgrown its premises and it moved to a former carpet shop in John Bright Street adjacent to the Alexandra Theatre. The gallery moved to its current site, the former Oozells Street Board School, in 1997 with the cost of the conversion partly funded by a grant from the National Lottery. The refurbishment work was designed by Levitt 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 the contractors. In 2011, the Ikon Gallery started work with

Gillian Wearing Gillian Wearing CBE, RA (born 10 December 1963) is an English conceptual artist, one of the Young British Artists, and winner of the 1997 Turner Prize. In 2007 Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. H ...

, to create a

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

work of ' A Real Birmingham Family'. The consequent bronze cast sculpture was erected in

Centenary Square Centenary Square is a public square on the north side of Broad Street in Birmingham, England, named in 1989 to commemorate the centenary of Birmingham achieving city status. The square is used as a staging area for many of the city's main cul ...

, outside the

Library of Birmingham The Library of Birmingham is a public library in Birmingham, England. It is situated on the west side of the city centre at Centenary Square, beside the Birmingham Rep (to which it connects, and with which it shares some facilities) and Baske ...

, on 30 October 2014.

Ikon Eastside

In July 2006, Ikon opened a second site in the

Digbeth Digbeth is an area of central Birmingham, England. Following the remodelling of the Birmingham Inner Ring Road, Inner Ring Road, Digbeth is now considered a district within Birmingham City Centre. As part of the Big City Plan, Digbeth is under ...

area of Birmingham, known as Ikon Eastside. 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 artist Ron Terada. This venue closed in summer 2007, but the gallery opened a gallery in a different building a short distance away in May 2008. After being part of the Fazeley Studios complex it closed permanently in 2011.

Current activities

The Ikon has an artistic programme consisting of three interdependent strands. *The gallery features temporary exhibitions over two floors totalling . A variety of media are represented, including

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

, mixed

media Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inter ...

and installation. *There is also an off-site programme which helps develop dynamic relationships between art, artists and the audience outside the gallery. The projects and events vary enormously in scale, duration and type of location, challenging expectations of where art can be seen and by whom. *Education is at the heart of the Ikon's activities, stimulating public interest in and understanding of contemporary

visual art The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and texti ...

. Through a variety of talks, tours, workshops and seminars, the Education & Interpretation programme recognises that artistic expression can empower people, heightening individual and community experience. Ikon is a

limited company In a limited company, the Legal liability, liability of members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by Share (finance), shares or by guarantee. In a c ...

, registered as an educational charity. Ikon receives core funding from Arts Council West Midlands and

and raises additional income from a variety of sources, including charitable trusts and foundations and corporate sponsorship.

Staff

The gallery's executive comprises Ian Hyde, Acting Chief Executive, Melanie Pocock, Acting Artistic Director, Exhibitions and Dr Linzi Stauvers, Acting Artistic Director, Education.

Former directors

*Simon Chapman (1972–1978) *Hugh Stoddart (1978–1981) *Antonia Payne (1981–1989) *Elizabeth Macgregor (1989–1999) * Jonathan Watkins (1999–2022)

Exhibiting artists

Solo exhibitions since 2000 include

Santiago Sierra Santiago Sierra (born 1966) is a Spanish artist, known for performance art and installation art. Much of his work deals with the topic of social inequities. He lives in Madrid. Career Sierra's most well-known works involve hiring laborers to co ...

On Kawara was a Japanese conceptual artist who lived in SoHo, New York City, from 1965 until his death. He took part in many solo and group Art exhibition, exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1976. Early life Kawara was born in Kariya, Japan on ...

, Roy Arden, Marcel Dzama,

Olafur Eliasson Olafur Eliasson (; born 5 February 1967) is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scaled installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience. In 1995, ...

, Simon Patterson,

Richard Billingham Richard Billingham (born 25 September 1970) is an English photographer and artist, film maker and art teacher. His work has mostly concerned his family, the place he grew up in the West Midlands, but also landscapes elsewhere. Billingham is bes ...

, Julian Opie,

Cornelia Parker Cornelia Ann Parker (born 14 July 1956) is an English visual artist, best known for her sculpture and installation art. Life and career Parker was born in 1956 in Cheshire, England. She studied at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design ...

, and Haroon Mirza (November 2018 — February 2019)

References

External links

Ikon GalleryLevitt Bernstein: Ikon Gallery1890 Ordnance Survey map of school
(in centre) * {{Coord, 52.4776, N, 1.9125, W, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title Contemporary art galleries in England Art museums and galleries in Birmingham, West Midlands Grade II listed buildings in Birmingham Former school buildings in the United Kingdom Art museums and galleries established in 1965 1965 establishments in England Charities based in England