ICA History: 1990s to present

Still from the film Sophie Scholl
Image courtesy of the ICA
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The ICA returned to questions of technology in the 1990s, hosting conferences such as Culture, Technology and Creativity and Hedgehogs and Megabytes. 1997 saw the opening of the digital New Media Centre with a programme of artists in residence, moving on to digital art web-based commissions in the present day.

The Cinema continues to play a strong role in the ICA’s programming, especially those acquired by the distribution arm, ICA Projects (now ICA Films), including the recent Oscar-nominated Sophie Scholl. Throughout the 1990s the ICA continued to break new ground with films from China, Japan and Iran, as well as becoming an outlet for the New Queer Cinema.

Exhibition and performances at the ICA in the nineties continued the 1970s concern with exploring the human body, including a retrospective of the work of Bruce Nauman in 1991. At the same time, Damien Hirst was exhibiting within the galleries: the YBAs had arrived, perhaps most spectaularly with the Chapman Brothers installation Chapman World in 1996. 2000 saw the establishment of Beck’s Futures Art Awards, aiming to showcase unknown artists, and with a large prize fund than that of the Turner prize. The last few years have also seen solo exhibitions by Tino Sehgal and a retrospective by performance artist John Bock entitled Klütterkammer.

Visitor inside the John Bock Klütterkammer installation, 2004
Image courtesy of the ICA
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Catalogue for the 2005 Beck’s Futures prize exhibition, from the Tate Library collection
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Catalogue for the exhibition Alien Nation, 2006
from the Tate Library collection
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Launched September 2007