Ikon Traces
Photography art-walk commissioned by the Ikon gallery as part of their 50th anniversary
July 2014
Photography art-walk commissioned by Ikon as part of their 50th anniversary, run in partnership with the Still Walking festival.
From the event page:
Starting in an octagonal kiosk in the Bull Ring in 1965 the Ikon Gallery has had five permanent venues in Birmingham city centre. As part of the Ikon Traces season, artist Pete Ashton asks “do these locations still have residual art-power?”
“Armed with key examples of visual art from Ikon’s history and channeling the ghosts of past venues, we will tune our eyes and look at the city through this filter. Then, with our aesthetic neurons firing, we’ll take photographs, creating new artworks from the vibrations of the old”. Pete Ashton
This is a lighthearted and fun walk open to everyone with a camera and a willingness to look at the city in new ways.
The walk started with a cleansing ritual. Participants were asked to join hands to form a hexagon on the approximate location of the original Ikon kiosk, now long demolished, while I recited the names of all the artists who had exhibited there.
I then passed out a booklet containing maps, illustrations and photographs from the four Ikon venues, along with colour photocopies of artworks taken from Ikon’s 60s, 70s and 80s retrospectives which I asked them to use as framing devices, tuning their minds before taking photographs.
Map of the route:
Selected images, supplied by Ikon.
Thanks to Ben Waddington from Still Walking and Simon Taylor from Ikon for making this happen.