Matthew Darbyshire, Blades House 2008, Installation shot at Gasworks, London. Courtesy of the artist and IBID projects.
A cumulative lists of all artists and projects involved in Nought to Sixty.
Nought to Sixty presents sixty projects by emerging artists based in Britain and Ireland over six months from 5 May to 2 November 2008.
Most of the artists in Nought to Sixty are under thirty-five, few of them have had significant commercial exposure, and in most cases this is their first opportunity to mount a solo project in a major public space.
The season is not intended to announce any new generation or style, but to build up a multifaceted portrait of the emerging art scene in the two countries, and to provide a space for exchange.
The Nought to Sixty programme consists of:
Events happen at the ICA every Monday night:
Sign up for regular updates about the Nought to Sixty and the rest of the ICA's programme, special events and offers. It's free.
Nought to Sixty is supported by:
Other partners:
Darbyshire gives the ICA's public spaces the coloured lighting schemes of other public, retail and corporate spaces from across London.
Matthew Darbyshire (born Cambridge, 1977, lives in London) lives in a bubble of deep turquoises, fuchsia pinks and acid yellows - he sees these colours everywhere and so, he points out, do you. Darbyshire is interested in the non-specificity of today's design language: the fact that bright CMYK dots are the logo for an estate agent and a cinema, as well as a NHS walk-in centre; that Arne Jacobsen egg chairs can be found in London's Zetter boutique hotel as well as in recently rebranded McDonald's restaurants. For Nought to Sixty his work is not in the ICA gallery spaces but in the publicly available, non-art spaces that are open to being branded, advertised in or hired for functions; as his ICA project these spaces are given the coloured lighting schemes of other public, retail and corporate spaces from across London.
The ICA's windows looking out onto the Mall are illuminated to mimic the yellow lighting of the façade of Selfridges (a department store that has itself used the feminist artist Barbara Kruger's trademark black, white and red posters for its advertising campaign; co-opting work that was originally critical of consumerism). A magenta light strip on the ceiling over the ICA ticketing area alludes to the lighting in the entrance to the Hackney Community College - a far cry from Selfridges, but an organisation that has chosen to express its identity in the same visual vocabulary. A green cast on the desk of the box office evokes the green in the lobby of British Petroleum headquarters.
One of the most interesting issues raised by Darbyshire's practice is the polymorphous role of the art institution. Whilst Selfridges, Hackney Community College and BP have little in common, one can imagine links between the ICA and each of these, whether in terms of leisure activity, audience, education programmes or sponsorship. Perhaps most importantly, the ICA is able to utilise the design language of CYMK non-specificity while also to critique its ubiquitous presence.
In Darbyshire's recent solo show at Gasworks, a non-profit space in South London, the gallery was used to recreate one of the privatised council flats opposite the venue - the type of property that a young media professional might move into. Darbyshire decorated the transformed gallery fashionably, using a brightly coloured mélange of furniture and accessories bought and borrowed from interior decoration stores ranging from George at Asda and Tesco Direct to Vitra and Fritz Hansen; the work employed the aspirational aesthetic of this imagined resident but pushed it to satiric excess. In the same way that Blades House (2008) analysed contemporary design as well as Gasworks's own role in the process of gentrification, Darbyshire's Nought to Sixty work evokes the ICA's use of branding, but also asks the viewer to look outwards, towards the corporate realities of London.
Melissa Gronlund
Darbyshire's lighting scheme for the ICA's Mall windows will continue for the duration of Nought to Sixty, but from June onwards it will change colour on a monthly basis.
Nought to Sixty in pictures: Matthew Darbyshire
"Conversation generates forms of exchange that are not fixed or static but rather sustain ongoing processes of engagement, responsiveness and change."
Artist-led organisations that support networks of emerging art in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Photos of the projects, artists and audiences taking part in Nought to Sixty.
Nought to Sixty includes a series of monthly discussions that address the networks that form and contribute to an emerging scene.