Generations

From baby boomers to millennials, to generation X, Y or Z, society is obsessed with what makes one generation different from the last. Yet, people all share collective pasts and presents. For the 12th year of The Courtauld Institute’s MA Curating the Art Museum programme, the students are pleased to announce their summer exhibition GENERATIONS: Connecting Across Time and Place. The exhibition gathers the work of twelve UK-based contemporary artists. Some artists consider the stories, memories and even genes that we inherit from our families. Others confront more distant generations, showing the continuing importance of historical figures and events.

The artists selected span different generations themselves, and are represented by works created from the 1980s to the present day. This exhibition includes works by Hurvin Anderson, Helen Cammock, Mona Hatoum and Hardeep Pandhal and showcases a variety of media ranging from photography to sculpture, painting and video. In Cotton.com, a series of 85 patterned oil paintings, Lubaina Himid imagines conversations between enslaved plantation labourers and Manchester millworkers. Lucy Skaer’s sculpture Leonora (The Tyrant) interrogates the colonial trading histories of exporting tropical hardwood and Pacific mother-of-pearl to England. On a more intimate level, Donald Rodney’s photograph In the House of My Father addresses the artist’s battle with sickle cell anaemia, a hereditary disease. The work depicts Rodney’s hand holding a miniature house made of his own skin.

The conversations established between these works will invite visitors to reflect upon how individual and collective identities are formed. The exhibition explores the memories we cherish and the histories we confront. What is to be gained by returning to these personal and collective experiences time and time again? Do we need to confront our difficult histories to help make sense of our present identities?

Due to unforeseen circumstances, GENERATIONS: Connecting Across Time and Place will be closing a day earlier than initially advertised, on Wednesday 03 July. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience caused.

Curated by The Courtauld Institute of Art’s MA Curating the Art Museum students. Works selected from the Arts Council Collection and LUX. With the support of Christian Levett.