Ikon Gallery Honors Michael Stanley with 'The Aerodrome' Exhibition

The Ikon Gallery in Birmingham has opened 'The Aerodrome', an exhibition dedicated to the memory of Michael Stanley, the British curator and former Turner Prize judge who died by suicide on September 21, 2012, at age 37. Stanley, who worked as a curator at Ikon Gallery from 2002 to 2004 and later served as director of Modern Art Oxford, is remembered through works by artists he admired or collaborated with, including John Constable, Jeremy Deller, Marcel Broodthaers, Thomas Houseago, Anya Gallaccio, Susan Philipsz, Michael Sailstorfer, Langlands & Bell, Aleksandra Mir, Graham Sutherland, Jenny Saville, Gilberto Zorio, and Adrian Paci. Paci's film 'Per Speculum', shot in 35mm, features Stanley's children Lola and Jude playing in the Northamptonshire countryside. The exhibition's title references Rex Warner's 1941 dystopian novel 'The Aerodrome', which Stanley cherished. Curated by Ikon director Jonathan Watkins along with David Austen and George Shaw, the show runs until September 8, 2019. A catalog includes Watkins's essay on art and place, and a text by Stanley's wife Carrie describing his mental illness as 'a monster grown inside him'. Stanley began his career as an artist at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, making Super8 films, and in 1997 organized 'Epilogue', a site-specific project in a condemned art school in Widnes, where works were left to be buried in the demolition.