Lisa Tickner - A ‘rubber-floored white temple’:The Kasmin Gallery in the 1960s

A gallery is several things at once: an architectural space, a curatorial project, a business enterprise, a set of social relations. The Kasmin Gallery (1963-1972) was a striking, coolly modernist interior, specially designed to show six-foot paintings in an even light. Kasmin knew that he wanted show 'Clem's boys' - Americans such as Morris Louis, Noland, Olitski and Poons, together with Caro, their English associate - and a more heterogeneous British group including John Latham, David Hockney and Richard Smith. With the Robert Fraser Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Kasmin was singled out by Time Magazine in its famous 'Swinging London' issue of April 1966. Together they attracted a new audience that mixed the professional middle and upper classes ('young inheritors' like his backer, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava), with the Chelsea set of the 1950s and the rising pop aristocracy (Jimi Hendrix lived round the corner and was a frequent visitor).

Lisa Tickner's background is in feminist theory and 19th and 20th century art history, but her current research interests focus on art education, and the London art world in the 1960s. Her publications include Dante Gabriel Rossetti (2003), Modern Life and Modern Subjects (2000), The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-1914 (1988); articles in Art History, the Art Bulletin, Block, New Formations, the Oxford Art Journal, Genders, Differences, and Representations; and catalogue essays including most recently on Gwen John for the exhibition Gwen John and Augustus John at Tate Britain, (2004). She is Professor of Art History at Middlesex University (see www.visual-culture.com).

Free Admission. No booking required.

For Further Information:
Helena Poropat, The Power Institute Foundation for Art & Visual Culture
RC Mills Bldg, A26, Fisher Rd, University of Sydney NSW 2006
Tel: (61) 2 9351 4211
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