Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London -- e-flux

(web image)

Liliane Lijn

Sky Never Stops , 1965

Institute of Contemporary Arts ICA London

Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. 17 June - 23 August 2009 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London http://www.ica.org.uk/poth

Exhibiting artists: Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Anna Barham, Matthew Brannon, Henri Chopin, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Alasdair Gray, Philip Guston, David Hockney, Karl Holmqvist, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Janice Kerbel, Christopher Knowles, Ferdinand Kriwet, Liliane Lijn, Robert Smithson, Frances Stark and Sue TompkinsCurated by Mark SladenPoor. Old. Tired. Horse. is an exhibition of art that verges on poetry. The exhibition starts with work from the 1960s, and with a group of artists who are associated with the Concrete Poetry movement that flourished during that decade. The movement can be taken as a symbol of the cross-pollination between art and literature that was a feature of the 1960s, but the exhibition goes on to look at other artistic practices from this era that explored the intersection of the graphic and the poetic, and concludes with a group of younger artists who place such concerns at the heart of their work.The concrete poetry genre has ancient roots, and can be understood as poetry in which the visual manifestation of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the more conventional elements in the poem. However, the Concrete Poetry movement is mainly associated with the 1950s and 60s, and the exhibition starts with the work of the artist and writer Ian Hamilton Finlay, who – in one of his many incarnations – was a key figure in the movement in Britain. The exhibition takes its title from a periodical that Finlay ran from 1962 to 1968, and which featured his own graphic and literary experiments alongside those of other artists and poets....