Institute of Contemporary Arts

ICA:60 Past, Present and Future

Richard Hamilton's poster for the ICA's June 1950 James Joyce exhibition (detail)

Originally conceived by a group of forward thinking artists, philosophers and designers, including poet, critic and champion of modernism Herbert Read and surrealist painter, Sir Roland Penrose, as a 'laboratory' or 'playground' for contemporary arts, the ICA's founding principle was emphatically to stimulate discussion, vitality, daring experiment and provide an alternative to 'another museum' or 'bleak exhibition gallery'. Over the last 60 years the institution has remained true to these ideals and continued to work across the broadest possible range of artistic and intellectual fields to encourage wider, often unorthodox, understanding of art and culture. Whether through presentation of a current trend or a new idea, individual or movement, the ICA has been consistently at the forefront of cultural exploration.

As the institution prepares not only to celebrate its past but to consider its future this year, it consciously maintains an objective to challenge traditional notions and boundaries of art forms. Through working with artists, curators, musicians, directors and thinkers who share this desire to investigate issues relevant to the wider concerns of today's world, the ICA has created a community of cultural exploration and remains at the forefront of contemporary arts activity.

The ICA is an exhibition centre, a cinema, a theatre, a music venue, a space for new and digital media and a forum for talk and ideas. With a programme of activities that manages to uphold distinctive identities for each form it also upholds a truly multi-disciplinary sensibility which uniquely characterizes the institution.

Throughout its history, artists and luminaries such as T.S Eliot, Stravinsky, Elizabeth Lutyens, Jean Tinguley, Ronnie Scott, Jackson Pollock, Cartier-Bresson, Yves Klein, Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Gerhard Richter, Jeff Koons, Nan Goldin, Peter Blake, Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman, Yoko Ono, John Maybury, Don Letts, Horace Ové, Wong Kar Wai, Lars von Trier, Takeshi Kitano, Abbas Kiarostami, Michael Winterbottom, Jeff Wall, Bill Viola, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren, Ian McEwan, Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith and Slavoj Zizek have all played a part in shaping and defining the ICA and kept it at the forefront of vital contemporary action. The ICA has played host to debut solos shows from some of today's highest profile artists including Jake & Dinos Chapman, Marlene Dumas, Damien Hirst, Rem Koolhas and Steve McQueen. It was one of the first venues to stage The Clash in 1976, the Stone Roses in 1989 and more recently debut London gigs by Scissor Sisters, Franz Ferdinand, Gogol Bordello and KT Tunstall. Legendary club nights, Blacktronica and Batmacumba were born at the ICA and more recently the much heralded grime and dubstep night, Dirty Canvas has taken up residence. Groundbreaking films such as In this World, Kandahar, Osama, and Turtles can Fly have all lent credence to the reputation of the ICA for being one of the first venues to screen significant social and political prescient and post-war films from the middle-east. ICA Offsite projects have included the infamous Intruders at the Palace musical benefit in 1988, whilst The Pet Shop Boys present Battleship Potempkin live event on Trafalgar Square in 2004 was one of the most ambitious projects ever to be staged in that arena and drew crowds of 35,000 and our planned event in Septemter 2007 with the Chemical Brothers and UVA promises to be similarly explosive.

Over the last year we have presented voices and visions from artists and speakers: Cerith Wyn Evans, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Zineb Sedira, Raqib Shaw, Mona Hatoum, Sophie Fiennes, Lukas Moodysson, Gerry Adams, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Naomi Wolf, Paul Abbot, Shere Hite, David Blunkett, Amartya Sen, Vivienne Westwood, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Favela Rising, Alan Moore, Marjane Satrapi, Hot Chip, Wolfgang Tillmans, John Berger, Morgan Spurlock, Tino Seghal, Jonathan Monk, Suede, Graham Coxon, Beth Ditto, Christopher Kane, Xiaolu Guo, Alison Jackson and many, many more.

ICA:60 hosts the prestigious and the promising, the contemporary and the avant-garde as it celebrates its 60th anniversary and leads the next generation into the future.