Ikon gallery
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| Established | 1965 |
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| Location | Brindleyplace, Birmingham |
| Type | Contemporary art |
| Director | Jonathan Watkins |
| Website | www |
The Ikon Gallery (grid reference SP060866) is an English gallery of contemporary art, located in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. It is housed in the Grade II listed, neo-gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877. The gallery's current director is Jonathan Watkins.
Ikon was set up to encourage the public to engage in contemporary art. As a result of this, the gallery runs an off-site "Education and Interpretation" scheme that educates audiences, promotes artists and their art. The gallery is open every day of the week except Mondays, though it opens on bank holiday Mondays.
Featured artworks include all forms of media including sound, sculpture and photography as well as paintings. Exhibitions rotate throughout the year so that as many pieces can be displayed as possible. Ikon is a registered charity which is partly funded by Birmingham City Council and Arts Council of England.
"The Ikon" (as it is colloquially known) was founded by Angus Skene and four artists from the Birmingham School of Art – David Prentice, Sylvani Merilion, Jesse Bruton and Robert Groves – after Skene bought Prentice's painting Kate and the Waterlilies in 1964, and the two started discussing the lack of support for contemporary artists provided by Birmingham's existing artistic institutions. Originally conceived as a "gallery without walls" (exhibitions were planned to tour unconventional locations such as cinemas and post offices in a motorcycle sidecar) it was eventually established in 1965 in an octagonal glass-walled kiosk in Birmingham's then-new Bull Ring shopping centre. The first exhibition was of work by John Salt, and the venue was staffed by the founding artists and sometimes their spouses on a voluntary basis.
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