GSK Contemporary at the Royal Academy of Arts

This year marked the beginning of a season of contemporary art at 6 Burlington Gardens: GSK Contemporary. The Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain is proud to sponsor the works of Swiss Artists represented throughout the Season in 2008. Over each of the next three winters, for three months at a time, GSK Contemporary will feature a series of exhibitions and events from large-scale video installations and new commissions to performance, sound, live music, film screenings and symposia. The programme, extending throughout this huge Victorian building, will also include a bar situated in the contemporary space, and FLASH, a pop-up restaurant by Bistrotheque.
Molten States, the first half of the 2008 GSK Contemporary programme, which explored the links between art, performance and experimental theatre, incorporating a focus on Berlin-based artists and dramatists, came to a close at the end of November 2008. Part 2, Collision Course, which was fully installed by 16 December 2008, reveals an apocalyptic vision, including a tribute to the artistic legacy of William Burroughs and new work from the Frank Cohen Collection as well as artists’ film and video within a cataclysmic film set. Also launching during the season is Event Horizon, a programme of new commissions by major London-based artists.
Major contributions by Swiss Artists Remy Markowitsch and Maya Roos will be on show throughout the 3-month  Season.
“GSK is the Royal Academy’s chance to reach the contemporary, mixed media, experimental, experiential avant garde: cutting edge through the genres of conventional art practice.”
Charles Saumarez Smith

“The Royal Academy offers opportunities to “use a historical building in an ephemeral and exciting way”. With Burlington Gardens, it could potentially join the most impressive, innovative contemporary art venues in the world, rivalling Paris’s Palais de Tokyo and New York’s PS1.”
Jackie Wullschlager