Pablo Bronstein – Sketches for Regency Living at the ICA

Pablo Bronstein – Sketches for Regency Living at the ICA

10 June, 2011
by: Tom Jeffreys

Pablo Bronstein's sensitive, but bold, exhibition will hopefully mark the dawn of an exciting new era in the history of the ICA.

The ICA's recent travails have been well documented. Under the directorship of Ekow Eshun and with Alan Yentob as Chairman of the Board, there were some very public disagreements, serious financial difficulties, redundancies, and a general sense that the illustrious institution had rather lost its purpose. Eshun and Yentob left in dramatic circumstances, and then, back in March, the Arts Council announced that it was hitting the ICA with a 42% cut in funding (incidentally, Eshun was on the board of judges that made the decision – although of course he left the room at the time the ICA was discussed...)

Anyway, back in October, Alison Myners replaced Yentob as Chair, in January, Gregor Muir was appointed Executive Director, and now, the first major exhibition under their leadership has opened. At the launch, there's a palpable sense that everyone wants the ICA to rediscover what it stands for, and, thankfully, Myners' assertions that the reconfigured space “feels like a new ICA” and promises “glimpses of an exciting new future” prove well-founded: Pablo Bronstein's Sketches for Regency Living is a complete delight, and sheds new light on the splendour and potential of the maligned, but much loved, ICA.

For the first time ever, an artist has been allowed to take over the entire ICA building, and the John Nash-designed Carlton House has been elegantly opened up with the help of 6a architects (who also worked on Raven Row and the lovely extension at South London Gallery). Throughout the building are a series of works across a wide range of media, but all rooted in research, nuanced historical detail, and an understanding both of the ICA's unique (and under-appreciated) architecture and the aesthetics of the Regency period more generally.

There's an amusing little video piece right on the top floor, and a pair of limited edition prints (on sale for £300) in the Nash Room; a large series of subtly differing architectural ink and watercolours going up various staircases; and a radical reappraisal of the ICA's theatre space. But for me the exhibition has two main focal points: the ground floor and the upper galleries. Upstairs, are two main gallery spaces, each featuring delicate Regency-esque paintings and an item of strange, adjustable furniture. These designs – a huge dark wood cabinet and a pair of matching consoles – display a rare refinement of vision, and an appreciation of the surreal that both questions and elevates. There's a sparseness to Bronstein's composition, coupled with a precision and subtle, ironic wit that more than justifies the scale of the works on show – huge, in their battered old gilt frames.

Downstairs, though, is for me the highlight, the point where the exhibition's various elements combine with humour and subtle force. One of the walls has been removed to create an open walkway through what used to be a fairly nondescript gallery space. Now, one strolls airily along – on the left, a massive architectural diagram, with strange shifts in perspective and a sense of something hidden or amiss, and on the right, a series of brilliantly choreographed performances. Against a grandly minimal Regency backdrop, and amongst a grouping of empty white plinths, a darkly curled dancer emerges, clad in a beautiful design by Mary Katrantzou – intense, posturing, she struts swarthily about like a cocksure Regency buck. Later she's replaced by a different, blonde-cropped dancer, who moves and flits, pauses, poses, and flows onward with an oddly mannered grace.

There's a knowing humour here, as well as elegance and beauty. Bronstein has produced a quite wonderful exhibition, one that is not only fresh and new, but also entirely in keeping both with the history of this elegant building and the future of a once great institution. If this is a marker, the ICA is to be great once more.

Pablo Bronstein - Sketches for Regency Living is at the ICA until 25th September 2011.

Image credit: Pablo Bronstein, Tragic Stage, 2011. Costumes by Mary Katrantzou. Photos © Steve White

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Tom Jeffreys