John Latham, Great Uncle Estate, 1960, Books, wires, nails, metal chain, string, leather, paint on canvas on hardboard, 395 x 274 x 20.3 cm.

John Latham, God is Great (#4), 2005, Glass, Books, Silicone, Dimensions variable.

John Latham, Four Phases of the Sun, 1963, Books, wires, plaster, paint on canvas on hardboard, 229 x 314 x 23 cm.

John Latham, Story of RIO, 1983, Plastic, glass, books, plaster, metal fittings, spray paint, 150 x 85 cm.

John Latham, The N-U Niddrie Heart, 1991, Glass, books, paper, plaster, electrical wire, light bulbs, metal fittings, and sand, 84 x 49 x 34 cm.

John Latham, Wave Function, 1959, Books, electrical wires, metal fragments, paint on canvas on hardboard, 122 x 105 x 20 cm.

John Latham, Cluster No. 11, 1992, Plaster, fragments of books, 44 x 54 x 50 cm.

Lisson Gallery
52-54 Bell Street
+ 44(0)20 7724 2739
London
The Lisson Gallery
Does Not Exist for 100 Years
May 5-June 5, 2010

Forty years on from John Latham's first solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery in 1970, the gallery revisits works and actions from that seminal show in the wider context of the artist's work through the 1970s, a period of extraordinary innovation, productivity and influence.

The work Latham made during this decade, beginning with the Lisson show, confirmed his position at the forefront of the new conceptual and event-based artistic practices. Through the diverse work he was producing in sculpture, film, painting, text, and performance, he also began to distil his Time-Base Theorem. At the heart of the theory is a scale or spectrum, a cosmological system for understanding all phenomena — physical and metaphysical — in terms of time and event. The current exhibition attempts a physical embodiment of Latham's concept of the Time-Base spectrum within the landscape of the gallery, from the smallest measurable event to the greatest.

In 1970, a motorcycle escort transported Latham's glass sphere work Least Event as a Habit through central London to Bell Street. This incredibly fragile object, constructed from one glass vacuum inside another larger glass vacuum, was so minimal as an object as to be almost nothing — a not nothing, no it, or noit in Latham's terminology — and it embodied Latham's concept of Least Event — an event of the least duration measurable in science. Least Event as a Habit survived its first perilous journey but not its second. The work has been refabricated for this exhibition.

During the course of the original exhibition, Latham's acclaimed film Encyclopedia Britannica Collections (MoMA New York and Reina Sofia, Madrid), was being created as a performative, process-based art work. The operators (a role performed in 1970 by owner of the gallery Nicholas Logsdail and musician, writer and curator David Toop) diligently constructed the stop-frame animation, a frame per page of a volume of the Encyclopedia. Latham intended this as an ongoing process which is continued now after a short pause of 40 years.

A section of Britannica is inserted into another of Latham's films, Erth (1971), a dramatic countdown through time and space to the surface of the earth. In this exhibition, Erth is the counterpoint to the Least Event, standing in for the cosmos, the longest event defined by the time-base spectrum. Between these extremes, the performance The Government of the First and Thirteenth Chair, first presented at Riverside Studios in 1978, provides a physical framework for the exhibition, summarising the position of humanity within Latham's theory of event.

The title of the exhibition appeared as a Time Sculpture during Latham's first show at Lisson Gallery in 1970. During the third week of the exhibition the gallery manifested itself for short periods in other places than Bell street, including Fiona's shoe, The Stock Exchange and the Insect House at Regent's Park. These places and times were documented on film.

The current exhibition at Lisson Gallery contributes to a wider re-evaluation of Latham's work in film and performance. A DVD publication of Latham's films will be published by Lisson Gallery, LUX, and Flat Time House in September 2010.

John Latham, Table with the Law, 1988, Table with glass and tan books, 75 x 33 x 76 cm.

John Latham, Little Red Mountain, 1960, Timber base, books, plaster, wires, 132 x 64 x 64 cm.

John Latham, Seein's Believin', 1961, Books, wire mesh, plaster, paint on canvas on hardboard, 122 x 91 x 20 cm.

John Latham, The How and the Why, 1959, Charred books, plaster, paint, wires, metal fittings on canvas on hardboard, 213 x 122 x 23 cm.

John Latham, Fly Fishing, 1959, Books, plaster, paint, and wire, 93 x 122 cm.

John Latham, They’re learning fast, 1988, Fish tank, pages from “Report of a Surveyor”, piranha fish, 47 x 91 x 30 cm, Courtesy John Latham Estate and Lisson Gallery, © The Artist.

John Latham, Classical Painting, 1988, Wooden draw, books, plastic tubes and expanded foam, 16 x 12 cm, Courtesy John Latham Estate and Lisson Gallery, © The Artist.

John Latham, Little Read Mountain, 1960-62, Timber base, books, plaster, wires, 132 x 64 x 64 cm, Courtesy John Latham Estate and Lisson Gallery, © The Artist.

Flat Time House
210 Bellenden Road
+44 (0)20 72074845
London
Distress of a Dictionary
October 2-November 2, 2008

John Latham (1921-2006), one of the most important British artists of the post-war period, lived at FTHo in Peckham, South East London for over 20 years. The House is now home to the John Latham Foundation and the John Latham Archive, and will be the primary location for a 10-month programme of exhibitions and events exploring the artist’s practice, his theoretical ideas and their continued relevance. The opening show, Distress of a Dictionary, is a solo exhibition exploring the language and humour in Latham’s work.

Latham considered the house a "living sculpture," with different rooms taking on the attributes of a living organism. At FTHo, a giant and colourful book-relief sculpture penetrates a large window on the front of the house, known as the Face, into a room called the Mind, in which a permanent installation of works demonstrating Latham’s Time-Base Theory has been maintained. The next room is known as the Brain. Latham described it as the space for ‘rational thought’ and this is where he worked on his theoretical writing and correspondence. The Brain is now be home to the John Latham Archive. The Hand, formerly Latham’s studio, will be the main location for the programme of changing exhibitions and events. The remainder of the house is taken up with what is termed the"‘Body Event," where eating, sleeping and "plumbing" take place. The name of the house derives from John’s theoretical language, in which "Flat Time" describes the way in which time and all possible events can be represented by the length and width of a flat canvas, demonstrated in works including Time-Base Roller (1972. Tate Collection).

In the painting and sculpture for which he is best known, Latham’s primary materials included glass, books, canvas and the spray gun. Developing alongside this concise visual language, from the mid-1950s onwards, was a cosmological theory, formulated through his art-making discoveries that considered time and event to be more primary than the established means of understanding, based on space and matter. Termed Time-Base Theory it offers an ordering and unification of all events in the universe including human actions, allowing an understanding of the special status of the artist in society, and is articulated by a permanent installation at FTHo.

The programme at FTHo will explore important moments and themes within Latham’s practice, including his involvement with underground culture in 1960s London, his interest in ecological issues and solutions and a re-evaluation of his work in film and video. Works by Latham’s contemporaries and collaborators will also be exhibited, as well as pieces by a younger generation of artists influenced by his practice. The programme at FTHo will run from October 2008 to July 2009 and is supported by the John Latham Foundation and Lisson Gallery.

Latham has been associated with several national and international artistic movements since he began showing work in the late 1940s. He is associated with the first phase of conceptual art of the 1960s, was an important contributor to the Destruction in Art Symposium of 1966, and was a founder member of the Artist Placement Group (1966-89). Latham’s work has been exhibited internationally, including recent solo exhibitions at Tate Britain (2005) and PS1, New York (2006). His work has been included in numerous historic group shows and many survey exhibitions of British Art since the 1960s including Live in Your Head (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2000), From Blast To Freeze (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 2003) and Art and the 60s: This was tomorrow (Tate Britain, 2004). Latham’s work is held in collections worldwide, including Tate Collection and MoMA.

Lisson Gallery has represented John Latham's work since 1970.

John Latham, Firenze, 1967, Polystyrene foam and books, plastic tubes, metal pipes, 76 x 57 x 61 cm, Courtesy John Latham Estate and Lisson Gallery, © The Artist.