Monthly : August 2009

An new exhibition of concrete poetry is on display at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The exhibition is titled “Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.” gets its name from a periodical by that name that championed new works of visual poetry in the 1960′s.

One review says of the exhibition that “the term concrete poetry doesn’t do justice to the fluidity, the free-falling work that flies around these rooms. The true rebels have arrived.”

An art museum may seem, at first glance, to be an unusual venue for concrete poetry. The blog “The Art of Fiction” comments, “it highlights again how poetry (and literature in general), sometimes can only get attention by disguise.” Literature and the visual arts, they’re all art, though, so perhaps this isn’t such an odd combination after all.

For those who cannot make the trek to London the see the exhibition, there is an online gallery of images. The annotated guide to the exhibition also provides an overview of the exhibition. The curators have also compiled a links page, full of websites of interest for anyone looking to get more exposure to visual poetry.

The show runs until the 23rd of August. Exhibiting artists include: 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 Tompkins.

“The Imaginary 20th Century” is a historical science-fiction novel takes the form of a large-scale projection, which is an interactive work that includes 2,200 images culled from different visual archives. The story focuses on the whimsical adventures of a woman in the year 1901 who has four different suitors, each with their own vision for the new century. Existing not only as an art installation, but also as a book and a DVD-ROM, The Imaginary 20th Century proposes a new approach to narrative.