LONDON.- GV Art presents a retrospective of the first five years of the gallery at Chiltern Street, to celebrate the work of the artists and scientists who contributed to the gallery programme and to chart new destinations for the future.

The exhibition is an encyclopaedic collection, featuring new work and revisiting previously exhibited work which spans the breadth of the gallery programme. The scheduled weekly events aspire to reunite contemporary contributors and introduce future collaborators. For two months GV Art will serve as a laboratory, inviting re-assessments and updates, igniting discussions and devising projects for the future.

Towards the Common Room inaugurates a research project on the Gaberbocchus Press Common Room, where a series of weekly discussions on art and science was organised by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson between August 1957 and July 1959. It was the first venture of its kind in London. The legacy of the Common Room includes the exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA in 1968. Towards The Common Room, features the work of Stefan and Franciszka Themerson and the artists and scientists who participated in the Common Room events, including paintings, drawings, photograms, films, books, journals and ephemera relating to those two years.

The Encyclopedia Galactica features in Isaac Asimov’s short story Foundation, published in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1942. After predicting the fall of the Galactic Empire, mathematician Hari Seldon set out to collect human knowledge into the all-encompassing Encyclopedia Galactica. His ostensible aim, to preserve the accumulated knowledge of Empire after the collapse.

The artists and scientists who have exhibited their work at GV Art demonstrate that human experience does not fit snugly into categories. They challenge disciplinary distinctions by making connections, establishing relationships and discovering interesting conflicts, controversies and ruptures. The themes of consciousness, trauma, illness and death are not the domain of any one discipline, but of our need to understand the human condition.

Curated by Sophia Kosmaoglou and Frances Sampayo, with the support of Robert Devcic, Jasia Reichardt and Nick Wadley.