FTHo

Alongside the three exhibitions, each taking its name from the key Latham work they contain, FTHo and RIA are commissioning an artist to produce a new performative work in response. Untitled, 1956 will present Grace Ndiritu’s commissioned carpet which incorporates a found image of a 1975 Artist Placement Group meeting. Alongside this will be documentation of new and existing performative works by Ndiritu including a live event entitled Event Structure: Holistic Reading Room (2022) which will take place at FTHo before the exhibition opening. Ndiritu’s intervention seeks to transform notions of group experiments from history to the present day through social practice. This commission reveals a resonance between her practice and Latham’s lifelong aim to bring reflective and intuitive modes of thinking to wider society – most clearly manifested in his work with the Artist Placement Group, a pioneering organisation that negotiated placements for artists within industry and government.

For each exhibition we have invited a writer to produce a newly commissioned exhibition text. For Untitled, 1956 we have invited Ifeanyi Awachie to respond to the works in the exhibition and Ndiritu's commission.

For Event Structure: Holistic Reading Room on Sunday 6 March 2–4pm, Grace Ndiritu will lead a group reading of John Latham's text Event Structure, which focuses on ‘Deep Time’ and group work. The reading will be interspersed by silent meditation breaks led by Ndiritu.

Event free but booking essential, please click here to reserve a place

The second exhibition in the trilogy Red, Green and Yellow (28 April–29 May) features works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection by John Latham, Liliane Lijn, Tim Head, Bob Law and Wolfgang Tillmans in an installation conceived by Berlin-based artist Julius Heinemann. The minimal and conceptual works in this presentation experiment with pure form, resonating with Latham’s belief in reflective and intuitive modes of working. The third and final exhibition, Gone Fishing (16 June–17 July), features work by John Latham, Boyle Family and Marlie Mul with a new audio commission by London-based artist Damien Roach under the umbrella of his cross-media project, patten. Latham and Boyle Family were pioneers in understanding sculpture as conceptual art and central participants in the cross-pollination of popular culture and the avant-garde.

An accompanying publication produced by FTHo and RIA with newly commissioned texts will be launched in June 2022.

This new collaboration between Flat Time House (FTHo) and the Roberts Institute of Art (RIA) takes as a starting point prominent John Latham works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection. The partnership, presented at FTHo, explores ideas in Latham’s work through performance-based commissions and a selection of key works from the Collection. 2021 was the centenary year of John Latham’s birth, and this three-part presentation has developed from a conversation between RIA and FTHo around finding new perspectives on Latham’s work through a dialogue between the David and Indrė Roberts Collection and the John Latham archive.

Grace Ndiritu Women's Strike: Healing The Museum (2021) Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

Grace Ndiritu is a British-Kenyan artist whose artworks are concerned with the transformation of our contemporary world. Works including The Ark: Center for Interdisciplinary Experimentation; COVERSLUT© fashion and economic project; and performance art series, Healing The Museum, have been shown around the world since 2012. Recently, her debut short film Black Beauty has been selected for prestigious film festivals including 72nd Berlinale in the Forum Expanded section (2022) and 32nd FID Marseille (2021). Ndiritu has been featured in TIME magazine, Phaidon’s The 21st Century Art Book, BOMB magazine, Art Monthly and Elephant magazine. Her work is housed in museum collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The British Council and The Modern Art Museum (Warsaw). Her writing has been published in her critical theory book Dissent Without Modification (Bergen Kunsthall) in 2021; The Whitechapel Gallery in the Documents of Contemporary Art anthology series; Animal Shelter Journal, Semiotext(e) The MIT Press; Metropolis M; and The Oxford University Press. 

gracendiritu.com

John Latham Untitled, 1956 Spray paint and emulsion on hardboard. Courtesy the David and Indrė Roberts Collection.