Eloise Hawser
Lives on Wire
1 July–6 September 2015
Institute of Contemporary Arts
Lower Gallery
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH
Lives on Wire is the first UK solo institutional exhibition by British artist Eloise Hawser. Her work reconfigures and repurposes commonplace materials applied in industrial processes to create sculptures and installations that subtly demonstrate the inherent mutability of everyday objects.
For Lives on Wire Hawser presents a site-specific installation featuring new sculpture and a digital video work developed through her investigative research into the life span of the cinema organ, ubiquitous during the silent-movie-era.
Hawser’s new work seeks to analyse the theoretical and physical attributes of a variable electronic resistor used to illuminate the Art Deco surround of this instrument during cinematic performances, known as the cinema organ colour changer. The relationship between the colour changer and the illuminated console is re-established using the ICA’s Lower Gallery lighting system, controlling the colour and intensity of the gallery’s lights. Accompanying the re-animated colour-changer is a new video work that examines a cinema organ embedded within a Regent Street building which today is devoted to commerce. The video illustrates the disembodiment of the cinema organ from cultural consciousness and its passage from sound-producing object to silent inertia.
Lives on Wire is supported by the Eloise Hawser Exhibition Supporters Group including Halo Lighting and The Zabludowicz Collection. Media Partner Spike
Isa Genzken: Basic Research Paintings
1 July–6 September 2015
Upper Gallery
Since the early 1970s, Isa Genzken has developed an extraordinary practice as evidenced through museum shows such as her recent retrospective at MoMA, New York. Increasingly ambitious displays of the artist’s work have tended toward a focus on large-scale sculptures, installations and impressive wall-mounted panel works. Lesser known are her paintings.
The Basic Research paintings are compelling in that they invite scrutiny from the micro to macro, revealing themselves as close-up impressions of urban architecture, to aerial views of alien landscapes. These works are sometimes compared to the abstract paintings of Gerhard Richter, due to Genzken’s relationship with the artist at that time. By contrast, Genzken’s approach to abstract painting is emboldened through a more straightforward and direct approach, using a limited palette that rarely strays from a range of dark hues such as dark green or brown.
The exhibition is curated by Gregor Muir and was originally featured as part of the ICA touring exhibition Beware Wet Paint held at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 2014–15.
Basic Research Paintings is kindly supported by the Isa Genzken Exhibition Supporters Group including Fatima Maleki. The exhibition was also made possible with the help and support Galerie Buchholz Berlin/Cologne. We would also like to extend our thanks to Daniel Buchholz, Katharina Forero de Mund and all those at Galerie Buchholz. Media partner Spike.
Related events:
Educator’s gallery tour: Eloise Hawser & Isa Genzken
Wednesday 1 July, 5pm
Artist’s talk: Eloise Hawser
Wednesday 15 July, 6:30pm
Friday Salon: Skeuomorphology
Friday 17 July, 3pm
Gallery tour: Eloise Hawser
Thursday 23 July, 6:30pm
Led by artist Yemi Awosile
Workshop on Listening
Saturday 8 August, 2pm
Panel discussion: The Influence of Isa Genzken
Wednesday 12 August, 6:30pm
Eloise Hawser: Performance: Er and other conductors
Thursday 27 August, 8pm
In collaboration with Aerial Sounds and House of Trax
TEXT2SPEECH: Eloise Hawser
Wednesday 2 September, 6:30pm
Also showing:
Yuri Pattison: mute conversation
Online commission
London-based artist Yuri Pattison creates an online work in response to the themes addressed in ICA’s 1968 exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity. Visit mute.conversation.ica.org.uk.
Shout Out! UK Pirate Radio in the 1980s
26 May–19 July 2015
ICA Fox Reading Room
An archival exhibition looking back at the early tower block pirate radio movement which emerged in the UK during the 1980s.
Coming soon:
Everything is Architecture: Bau Magazine from the ’60s and ’70s
29 July–27 September 2015
ICA Fox Reading Room
The first significant UK presentation of Austrian experimental architectural magazine Bau, co-edited between 1965 and 1971 by renowned architect Hans Hollein, artist Walter Pichler and architectural theorist Günther Feuerstein amongst others.
