The Hut Project wearing conceptual beards, 2008. Image courtesy the artists and Limoncello, London.
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:
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The brainchild of artists Chris Bird, Ian Evans and Alec Steadman, The Hut Project takes a wry look at the art world through events which employ surprising conceptual strategies.
The Hut Project is in the Upper Gallery from Monday 21 to Monday 28 July.
The Hut Project is an artists' collective based in London, one that was formed in 2005 by Chris Bird (born Birmingham, 1971), Ian Evans (born Glasgow, 1982) and Alec Steadman (born Sidcup, 1983). The group's collaborative practice took shape through a shared sense of alienation from their studies at Middlesex University, and one of their first acts was to construct a temporary hut within the grounds of the university, from which they could offer an intellectual position from the 'outside'. Since then The Hut Project has been observing the art world with an absurdist eye, pursuing a brand of institutional critique that is invested with humour, but which also reveals the underlying pathos of the desire to make art.
For Nought to Sixty The Hut Project has created an exhibition, entitled Old Kunst, that constitutes a retrospective of their work – both collective and individual – assembled without qualitative judgement. The exhibits include all the creative output that they have been able to source, as well as indexes of works that they were not able to display. The project satirises the myth-making tendencies of the art world – and the emphasis that events such as Nought to Sixty place on the notion of the 'emerging' artist – while also providing compellingly personal narratives.
The strategy of self-deprecation is just one of the tactics that The Hut Project has used to analyse the base 'equations' through which the art world operates. The group pushes these formulas to an extreme, and there is always the risk that their self-reflexive project could implode, but their work also looks beyond these confi nes – and is characterised by the desire to understand the sources of a belief in art. The text accompanying Old Kunst, taken from correspondence with the artists' mothers, attempts to ascertain how the members of the group arrived at this juncture. It is a text with an emotional core, in which the work's conceptual exercise is set within the loaded context of a parent/child relationship.
Other recent works by The Hut Project include It's Not Me, It's You, a project exhibited at Limoncello Gallery in 2008. This piece involved a series of formulas and transpositions, designed to ascertain the relationships between the work of The Hut Project and that of artists represented by the gallery – including the conceptual and financial differences – and express these relationships as exhibits. The process managed to combine the most basic art market valuation with a kind of poetic transubstantiation, and was characterised not by finger pointing, but by a delight in the conceptual and theatrical possibilities within the structures of the art world.
Old Kunst develops such strategies, this time creating a comprehensive index of artwork produced at every stage of the artists' lives. By locating the origins of this production in childhood, and in the opinions and attitudes of their mothers, this research serves as an example of the wider questions posed by the group. Rooted in both aspiration and a necessary petulance, The Hut Project discovers the poignancy within the desire to produce art and to be included within its communities and value systems.
Richard Birkett
Nought to Sixty in Pictures: The Hut Project
Why an institution of contemporary art(s) like this, and not any other?
Artist-led organisations that support networks of emerging art in England outside London.
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.