The British Art Show 5

Group show at Ikon Gallery, City Art Centre, Collective Gallery, Dean Gallery, Fruitmarket Gallery, Inverleith House - Royal Botanic Garden, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Talbot Rice Gallery, John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton, Millais Gallery - Southampton Institute, Southampton City Art Gallery, Centre for Visual Arts, Chapter Arts Centre, Ffotogallery, National Museum & Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. 2000
Date: 8 April, 2000 until 4 June, 2000
Curator: Pippa Coles, Matthew Higgs, Jacqui Poncelet
Organiser: Hayward Touring Exhibitions

Major touring group exhibition, held every five years.

Touring schedule:
Edinburgh, 8 April - 4 June 2000
Southampton, 23 June - 20 August 2000
Cardiff, 8 September - 5 November 2000
Birmingham, 25 November 2000 - 28 January 2001

“In some important respects The British Art Show 5 continues in the tradition of its predecessors: it is a large-scale survey of art produced in the UK; it will be shown in a number of major cities in England, Scotland and Wales; and it is separated from the last British Art Show by five years. it shares with previous British Art Shows (and The British Art Show 4 in particular) a tendency to spread itself - across venues, and across media - and to infiltrate areas traditionally considered off-limits to visual or “fine’ art. Beyond that, there are few similarities. The British Art Show 5 is new, now, and different.”

Above extract from exhibition guide to accompany The British Art Show 5, organised for National Touring Exhibitions by the Hayward Gallery for the Arts Council of England. Everything and Nothing: A guide to The British Art Show 5. Showing at venues in Edinburgh, Southampton, Cardiff and Birmingham, 2000/2001.

The exhibition included work by a very limited number of artists from African or Asian backgrounds, namely artists such as Runa Islam and Donald Rodney. Rodney had died in March of 1998, so his inclusion was posthumous. References to him in the accompanying exhibition guide as follows: “Donald Rodney b 1961, Birmingham; d 1998, London. “You’ve handed me this tiny building in a bottle and you say “it is what you think it is” and there are dressmakers’ pins in it, huge stakes in real skin … I wonder what kind of home it represents …’ In the House of My Father formed part of Donald Rodney’s last solo exhibition, 9 Night in Eldorado. Part wake, part memorial, this celebratory exhibition was dedicated to his father, who had died two years earlier. Rodney himself was suffering from sickle-cell anaemia, an inherited disease of the blood. One of the most interesting artists of his generation, he continued to make inventive and ambitious work throughout the last stages of his illness.”

Exhibition guide (unpaginated) was written by Helen Luckett, Hayward Gallery Education Programmer.

»  The British Art Show 5 catalogue

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2000

»  British Art Show 5 guide

Exhibition guide relating to an exhibition, 2000