March 02, 2002
The Real Home Of The Avant-Garde
by Iain Aitch
Anyone who has followed the recent debate surrounding the resignation of
ICA chairman Ivan Massow could be forgiven for thinking that avantgarde
art is all but dead in the capital.
That is what Massow inferred in his now infamous article about the state of modern art in The New Statesman, but had he taken the time to wander a mile north of The Mall to a mews tucked away behind Russell Square Tube station, then he may just have found the very thing he claims that the ICA has long ceased to be.
Striding up the wooden-slatted ramp to the first-floor gallery of The
Horse Hospital (which really is a former equine sanatorium), Massow
could well have come across work by passionate, obsessive underground
artists, challenging exhibitions by foreign newcomers and even art that
utilises the "craft" he found so lacking at the ICA. Sure, there is no
restaurant, just one toilet and the heat comes from three-bar electric
fires, but The Horse Hospital is the current home of London's
avant-garde.