First publicly funded exhibition space dedicated to cultural diversity
First completed visual arts centre by David Adjaye anywhere in the world
First new build public gallery in London since the Hayward Gallery 40 years ago
Photograph: Ed Reeve
London, 3 October 2007: Rivington Place, the UK's first publicly funded gallery dedicated to culturally diverse and international perspectives in visual arts was launched today by Professor Stuart Hall, the pioneering critic and theorist; Sebastian Lopez, director of Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and Mark Sealy, director of Autograph ABP.
Rivington Place (http://www.rivingtonplace.org/) is a new and iconic cultural landmark for London and the UK and will be the only newly built public gallery to continuously show work from differing cultural perspectives on a permanent basis. A changing programme of exhibitions, events, talks, education and community initiatives is set to give visitors a fascinating insight into topics and issues that touch all of our lives.
The opening exhibition, London is the Place for Me, (5 October - 24 November), makes a direct link between the "Windrush generation", the first generation of immigrants from the Caribbean, and contemporary arrivals to all parts of the UK from all over the world through photography and film.
In January 2008, Iniva will curate States of Exchange: Artists from Cuba, a wide-ranging examination of Cuba's artistic production at a time of transition. Bangladesh 1971, curated by Autograph ABP, opens in April 2008, and will be the first comprehensive review in the UK of one of the most important conflicts in modern history, a highly relevant exhibition given the gallery's location on the doorstep of London's Bangladeshi community.
The £8m building is supported by a £5.9m Arts Council England Lottery Capital 2 programme grant. Barclays is the Rivington Place founding corporate partner, contributing £1.1m toward the development.
The building, by award-winning architect David Adjaye OBE, is the first visual arts centre he has completed anywhere in the world and the first new-build public gallery in London since the Hayward Gallery opened in 1968.
The 1,295/1,845m2 building, a new home for two organisations, Iniva and Autograph ABP, contains:
- Barclays Project Space, a 135m2 glass fronted ground floor gallery space facing onto Rivington Street
- Project Space 2, a 71m2 exhibition space with flexible seating to accommodate film and video work and seminars
- The Stuart Hall Library, a unique resource for anyone with an interest in international perspectives in visual arts and photography
- An education space used for a range of projects involving the local community and schools as well as artists residencies
- Autograph ABP's photography archive & print collection featuring work by historically important figures as well as emerging, younger photographic artists
- Lati Ri café/bar open during the day with a late license until 1am
- Workspaces for 2/3 local creative businesses
- Offices of Iniva and Autograph ABP
Professor Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor, Open University and Rivington Place Project Champion, said: "Difference is complex - it alters and evolves, but does not go away. Difference matters and will continue to matter, it provides an incredible source of richness, new ways of seeing and creativity. Rivington Place is a landmark building which celebrates diversity and the exciting and essential contribution it makes to the visual arts."
Mark Sealy, Director, Autograph ABP, said: "This project is not just about bricks and mortar, it represents a modest but important destination. It will be a home for the work Iniva and Autograph ABP have been doing collectively for over 20 years and will provide a sense of place for the artists and issues we champion. It is also a strategic shift towards greater certainty and greater autonomy for both the organisations."
Sebastian Lopez, Director, Iniva, said: "It is an honour to be joining Iniva at this exciting new moment. Rivington Place will provide an important window - an identifiable and tangible space where audiences of all kinds will be able to discover the international perspectives in the visual arts that both Iniva and Autograph ABP have championed for so long. We want to inject new ideas and energy. We want to challenge a cultural climate in which diversity can be presented as a carnival of exotic names and where the issues that really matter are often put aside."
Sarah Weir, Executive Director, Arts Council England, London said, "The opening of Rivington Place this autumn will be a true celebration of the richness and diversity of the arts in England today. With innovation and internationalism at its heart, it is set to really make its mark on the cultural landscape. It will challenge perspectives, champion new visions and give artists and visitors different opportunities to explore what it means to live in a city as vibrant and diverse as 21st century London."
David Adjaye, Director, Adjaye Associates said: "Rivington Place is hugely significant as it's my first completed arts building anywhere in the world. It's a natural addition to the East End's existing landscape of art institutions and reinforces the area's position as a national and international arts and culture destination."
Chris Ofili, artist, said: "It's been a long time coming. Rivington Place through both its architecture and curatorial programming will provide a hub for the ever-rotating world of visual arts. It's a necessary project for our present and our future."
END
Kallaway
Anna Cusden 020 7221 7883 anna.cusden@kallaway.co.uk
Will Kallaway 020 7221 7883 william@kallaway.co.uk
Rivington Place
Josie Ballin
Press PR Manager 020 7229 9616
josie@iniva.org
Editors Notes
Opening Exhibition London is the Place for Me
5 October - 24 November
London is the Place for Me takes its title from the 1940s calypso song and reflects on how our sense of home is shaped by the ever-changing cultural landscape around us.
Barclays Project Space
Dinu Li, a British Chinese artist will exhibit a new series of photographs, commissioned by Autograph ABP, featuring people from diverse communities calling home from international phone centres - those small shop/booths that have mushroomed in the UK's major cities. During the Windrush era, making an international call to one's distant motherland was an impossible dream for most migrants. Li's response was to create a set of portraits, entitled Press the * then say hello, illustrating not only how circumstances have changed for today's diverse communities, but also revealing the interplay between closeness and distance as manifested by each individual caller's body language.
Project Space 2
The moving image work presented by inIVA in Project Space 2 approaches the title of this exhibition both as a question and an affirmation. Installations of Mona Hatoum's Measures of Distance, Keith Piper's Go West Young Man, and Harold Offeh's Alien at Large, Oxford all expose the concept of ‘home' as a site continually under construction. Whether London, or Britain, or any place is ‘for us' will necessarily need to be negotiated through dialogues with difference.
Education Space
Brazilian artist Leticia Valverdes will create a photographic studio at Rivington Place during London is the Place for Me. A contemporary version of the famous Harry Jacobs studio in Brixton in which thousands of newly-arrived immigrants to the UK had their pictures taken between the 1950s and 1980s, the aim is to document the aspirations of recent immigrants to the UK. These will inform different backdrops and props created for the studio at Rivington Place and will raise sensitive questions about how people want to be seen in London and how they want to present their London life to those still in their countries of origin. Participants will have their photographs instantly printed as a set of postcards, some of which they can keep and some of which they might send to family and friends in their countries of origin.
Stuart Hall Library and Iniva Archive
The Stuart Hall Library is named after the eminent cultural theorist and vice-chair of Rivington Place. With its unique collection of monographs, exhibition catalogues, 80 current international art periodicals and slide collection, and its on-line presence, searchable catalogue and digital archive, Iniva's Library is a unique facility for the contemporary visual arts, a gateway for bringing the work of culturally-diverse artists to the widest possible audience and providing that work with a critical, theoretical and historical context. To mark the journey and arrival at Rivington Place, there will be artist's commissions in the Library exploring themes of archive.
Rivington Place Listings Information
Rivington Place, London, EC2A 3BA
Public opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 11am-6pm, Late Thursdays: 11am-9pm, Saturday: 12noon-6pm, Sunday, Monday: Closed
Contact: +44 (0) 20 7749 1240, info@rivingtonplace.org, http://www.rivingtonplace.org/
Nearest tubes: Old Street & Liverpool Street. Rivington Place is fully accessible in all public areas. For parking & wheelchair facilities please call +44 (0) 207749 1240
Iniva & Autograph ABP - External Events & Exhibitions
In addition to programming in Rivington Place, both organisations will also continue to work collaboratively and produce events and touring exhibitions for external venues. This week Iniva and ICA's exhibition Alien Nation opens at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art in Norwich, and Iniva and Henry Moore Institute will be presenting a talk Why Sculpture, Why Here at Tate Modern. Autograph ABP is currently exhibiting From Emperor to Military Dictator: Shemelis Desta's Ethiopian Archive 1963-1982 at The Photographers Gallery.
Information about Iniva's full programme can be found on http://www.iniva.org/
Information about Autograph ABP's full programme can be found on www.autograph-abp.co.uk/
Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), established in 1994, is a contemporary visual arts agency that supports and promotes the work of artists, curators and scholars form diverse cultural backgrounds, making their artistic practice and ideas accessible to new and diverse audiences. Iniva creates exhibitions, publications, multimedia, education and research projects. The agency invests in artists who deserve wider recognition for their talents; takes art into unexpected places as well as the more traditional venues; and engages new audiences, young and old, in contemporary art.
Autograph ABP is an international non-profit making photographic arts agency established in 1988 that addresses issues relating to cultural identity, social change, human rights and historically-marginalised photographic practice. Its primary role is to develop, exhibit and publish the work of photographers and artists from culturally diverse backgrounds and to act as an advocate for their inclusion in all mainstream areas of exhibition, publishing, training and education and commerce. To this end, Autograph ABP produces its own programme of activities and collaborates with other arts organisations, nationally and internationally.
http://www.autograph-abp.co.uk/
Adjaye Associates
David Adjaye is one of Britain's leading contemporary architects, whose designs emphasise the experience as much as the function of architecture. Born in Tanzania, his influences range from African art and architecture to contemporary art and music. He has made numerous collaborations with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Chris Ofili.
The unusual lattice pattern of Rivington Place was influenced by a Sowei mask from Sierra Leone. This affects the internal space by creating windows at different heights, the lower ones giving views in the street, the upper ones giving views of the sky. In larger spaces, the windows produce an ambiguous sense of scale as their position and size contradict the effects of perspective. The building previously occupying the site had been demolished some years ago, but the volume of the new building has similar proportions to some of the warehouses in the area. The materials and colours used update the architectural language of the older buildings whilst responding to the use and purpose of the building. Adjaye Associates is currently working on projects in the UK and mainland Europe, Russia, China, the U.S and Africa. http://www.adjaye.com/
Rivington Place Funding Supporters
Rivington Place would like to give thanks to Arts Council England for supporting the project with a £5.9m Lottery Capital 2 programme grant and Barclays who is the Rivington Place founding corporate partner, contributing £1.1m toward the development.
Arts Council England works to get more art to more people in more places. It develops and promotes the arts across England, acting as an independent body at arm's length from government. Between 2006 and 2008, it will invest £1.1 billion of public money from government and the National Lottery in supporting the arts. This is the bedrock of support for the arts in England. It believes that the arts have the power to change lives and communities, and to create opportunities for people throughout the country.
Barclays is the founding corporate partner of Rivington Place, contributing £1.1 m towards the project's development. The innovative partnership reflects Barclays history of supporting positive social change and making a real and lasting difference to the diverse communities in which it operates. Barclays is a committed corporate supporter with a focused programme of community support which last year totalled over £45 million - one of the most substantial in the UK.
Rivington Place would like to also thanks to their project supporters. The Rivington Place project has London Development Agency, City Fringe Partnership, European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and Hackney Council funding for SME workspaces for cultural/creative industries in the building. It has received access funding from The City Bridge Trust. The Foyle Foundation and the Garfield Weston Foundation have also contributed funds to the project and the Brodksy Center and Clifford Chance have provided in-kind support.
Rivington Place Board Members
- Ken Dytor (CEO. Regeneration Investments; Rivington Place Chair)
- Professor Stuart Hall (Emeritus Professor, Open University; Rivington Place Vice Chair & Project Champion)
- Shreela Ghosh (Deputy Director inIVA, Rivington Place CEO)
- Mark Sealy (Director Autograph ABP, Rivington Place CEO)
- Rosemary Miles (Curator (Contemporary) Word & Image Dept, Victoria & Albert Museum)
- Ron Henocq (Director, Café Gallery Projects)
- Paula Kahn (Chair, Islington Primary Care Trust and of Equality Works Ltd)
Rivington Place Ambassadors
- Baroness Lola Young (Author & Academic)
- Chris Ofili (Artist)
- David A Bailey (Artist, Curator, Writer)
- Dawoud Bey (Artist)
- Deborah Willis (Artist)
- Faisal Abdu'Allah (Artist)
- Gary Younge (Writer & Journalist)
- Glenn Ligon (Artist)
- Iqbal Wahhab (Founder, The Cinnamon Club)
- Isaac Julien (Artist)
- Jennifer Williams (Director, Centre for Creative Communities)
- Judy Brodsky (Artist, Professor Emeritus Fine Art Rutgers University)
- Paul Hobson (Director, Contemporary Art Society)
- Pedro Meyer (Photographer & Founder, ZoneZero.com)
- Professor Lawrence Grossberg (University of North Carolina)
- Salah Hassan (Chair, Department of History of Art, Cornell University)
- Sunil Gupta (Artist)
- Victoria Miro (Victoria Miro Gallery)
- Yinka Shonibare MBE (Artist)
Rivington Place Supporters include
- Baroness Helena Kennedy
- David Lammy MP
- Henry Louis Gates Jnr
- Rt Hon PaulBoateng, UK High Commission, South Africa
- Sir Christopher Frayling
- William Sieghart
- Thelma Golden
- Trevor Phillips
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