British Art Show 7 (Symposium)

This event was a collaboration between ICF, the British Art Show (BAS) and The New Art Exchange Gallery in Nottingham. The BAS is a major survey exhibition organised every five years to showcase contemporary British art. Each time it is organised the show tours to three UK cities. The last exhibition in the series, referred to as BAS6, was touring a number of major cities in the UK in 2005 and 2006. BAS has become so large that it usually requires a number of venues to accommodate it. As a snapshot of contemporary British art, the exhibition has some equivalence to the biennial exhibitions of the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition is normally selected by three people who are appointed for their knowledge of contemporary art. Previously these have been artists and critics, but more recently they have been selected from curators.

The New Art Exchange in Hyson Green, Nottingham, is the UK’s only gallery outside London dedicated to black and Asian artists. Housing public galleries, workshop spaces, rehearsal rooms and offices, as well as a café and shop, it is hoped the centre will become the UK’s ‘very best’ for multicultural arts. The ICF has been invited to curate a discussion on the issues underpinning the evolution of the BAS. Like Documenta, this will evolve over a five-year period, allowing for new configurations and diverse approaches to the challenge of presenting a national survey. What is strategically significant is that the exhibition tours to partner cities that raise the resources to host the exhibition. For BAS7 one of the host cities is Plymouth, which has not previously benefited from an exhibition of this scale, raising the question of how infrastructural challenges impact on the curatorial choices. These and an array of questions will aim to navigate a path through issues that have, perhaps, been left unanswered since the last exhibition.