‘Thrilling Wonder Stories’, source for ‘The Ultimate Planet’, BUNK collage series, Eduardo Paolozzi, 1952.
It’s 60 years since the Independent Group first met, and the work is attracting increased attention on an international scale. The meeting first took place at the ICA, and this two-day event celebrates the Independent Group’s legacy at the very institution which fostered and encouraged it. Contributors explore the history and legacy of the Independent Group in relation to art, architecture, design, material culture, photography and critical theory.
The main aim of the conference is to bring together researchers from around the world who are working on aspects of the Independent Group, to pool their knowledge about this historical phenomenon, and share this with a more general audience. The Group represents a key moment in the history of British art and architecture. Although it only met between 1952 and 1955, the issues explored by the members, including architects Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling and Colin St. John Wilson; artis Magda Cordell, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi; and writers Lawrence Alloway, Reyner Banham and Toni del Renzio, continue to resonate today.
Curated by Anne Massey (Kingston), the conference brings together key US scholars Benjamin Buchloh (Harvard) and Beatriz Colomina (Princeton), together with leading UK and European scholars, including Juan Arribas (Madrid) Barry Curtis (Royal College of Art), Ben Cranfield (Birkbeck), Charlie Gere (Lancaster), Dirk van den Heuvel (TU Delft), Ben Highmore (Sussex), Richard Hornsey (UWE), Stephen Kite (Cardiff), Alex Seago (Richmond), John-Paul Stonard (Courtauld), Kim Tyler (Loughborough) and Victoria Walsh (Westminster). There will also be film screenings, including unseen excerpts from the William Turnbull Studio film, ‘Beyond Time’ and a BUNK display in the ICA Studio.
The event represents the first stage of a collaboration between The School of Art and Design History at Kingston University and the ICA, and is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Press information:
Naomi Crowther | Press Officer ICA | naomi.crowther@ica.org.uk | 020 7766 1407
Listings information: BUNK, Celebrating 60 Years of the Independent Group: 26 – 27 April 2012
£65 / £55 Concessions / £50 ICA Members / £40 Student ICA Members
www.ica.org.uk | Twitter @icalondon | www.facebook.com/icalondon
Book online www.ica.org.uk Call Box Office 020 7930 3647 Textphone 020 7839 0737
Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH
Key speaker profiles:
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University.
Richard Hamilton in America
The talk will deal with the rare but poignant encounters between Hamilton and American culture of the Sixties, specifically the series of reliefs depicting the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Buchloh published among others ‘Design, Utopia, and Stigma ‘ in ‘Richard Hamilton: Modern Moral Manners’ (Serpentine Gallery, London 2010) and ‘Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975’ (MIT Press, 2001)
Beatriz Colomina is Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Programme in Media and Modernity at Princeton University.
Unbreathed Air, 1956 Alison and Peter Smithson’s House of the Future
The Smithson’s House of the Future was both a house on exhibit and an exhibitionist house, a peep show.
Colomina recently curated the exhibition ‘Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X’ at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and travelled to Montreal, Documenta 12, London, Oslo, Vancouver, Barcelona, and Maastrich. The catalogue of the exhibition has been published by ACTAR in 2010.
Barry Curtis is Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture and ex Director of Research (Middlesex), a Fellow of the London Consortium and Tutor in Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art.
Tomorrow?
The paper to be presented at BUNK is titled ‘Tomorrow?’ and seeks to reconstruct the future that the Independent Group addressed in their writings and publications.
Among Curtis’s recent publications are ‘Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film’ (2009) and ‘Dinosaur Design’ (2012) – a contribution to a collection of essays on the Rhetoric of Design.
Anne Massey is Professor of History of Design at Kingston University.
BUNK: Framing the event
In the presentation Massey will draw attention to the overlooked areas of the Independent Group and popular music; the Independent Group and the home and the Independent Group and Hollywood.
Massey published the book ‘The Independent Group: Modernism and Mass Culture, 1945-59’ (Manchester University Press, 1995).
Dirk van den Heuvel is an Associate Professor of Architecture at TU Delft.
Musique Concrète – Béton Bruit
An immersion into the musical (dis)order of swing, pop and everyday noise may help us to navigate once again the search for ”une architecture autre”, or as Peter Smithson noted: ‘Brubeck! a pattern can emerge’.
Van den Heuvel published the book ‘Alison and Peter Smithson – from the House of the Future to a house of today’ (010 Publishers, 2004)
Press contact for further information and images:
Naomi Crowther | Press Officer ICA | naomi.crowther@ica.org.uk | 020 7766 1407
