ICA: Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.

Wednesday 17th June - Sunday 23rd August

Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. is an exhibition that takes an imaginative and expansive look at text-based art practices from the 1960s to the present day. In particular the exhibition is inspired by the example of Concrete Poetry, a movement that flowered in the 60s but which is now largely forgotten. Concrete Poetry explored the graphic potential of language alongside its poetic and literary possibilities, and so too do the works in this exhibition, which includes works by figures who emerged in the 60s alongside those of younger, contemporary artists.

See here.

Comments

[Harry Gilonis]

Dear [Name-of-Curator],

I’m writing in connection with the recently-announced exhibition at the ICA, Poor. Old. Tired. Horse., concerning ‘text-based art practices from the 1960s to the present day’. This is a fascinating topic; but as well as omitting numerous folk I would consider obvious contenders, there are some weird inclusions too. Of course that’s part of the fun of group shows, as with anthologies; but I wish I could fathom even remotely what David Hockney is doing there (except, obviously, as a crowd-puller).

However, I’m not entirely writing to congratulate the ICA on catching up with what was contemporary 40 years ago. I note that your exhibition is in particular “inspired by the example of Concrete Poetry”, which does make the chosen title a tad bizarre. As a friend of long-standing of Ian Hamilton Finlay (whose occasional magazine of that title is - I assume - your source?) I am saddened to see his activities so cavalierly misread. Most issues of Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. contained predominantly or entirely ‘straight’ poetry by, e.g. Theodore Enslin or Lorine Niedecker; with some more graphically innovative work. Even that last was by no means all concrete poetry. P.O.T.H. was so far from being the ‘house journal’ of the international Concrete Poetry movement that issue 10 was specifically subtitled as a ‘concrete number’ – which if that was all it ever published would have been otiose. Issue 14 displays a wider grasp of the field than your implicit linking of P.O.T.H. and ‘Concrete Poetry’ would suggest you possess, setting out as parallel but not congruent endeavours the areas of ‘Visual - Semiotic – Concrete’. The remit of P.O.T.H. is much wider than “text-based art practices” suggests, there being themed issues with utterly unrelated foci: inland waterways, the delights of drinking tea. Not even the artists represented in P.O.T.H. are significantly “text-based” – in fact the opposite is the case for all of them (Emil Antonucci, Charles Biederman, Ad Reinhardt, Bridget Riley, Margot Sandeman).

All in all, I cannot see that it does your exhibition any favours to re-borrow Finlay’s borrowing from Robert Creeley (who was at least a friend) in order to give it the cachet of a well-turned and mysterious phase. It gives no practical assistance to framing your exhibition, and mis-represents a delightful and important project by a man not now here to make his own objections. If there is time to change it, I think you should.

Yours sincerely,

Harry Gilonis

[LeraJenkins]

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[Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. &laqu]

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