It began 50 years ago in a glass-walled kiosk in Birmingham’s concrete Bullring shopping centre with an ambition to be the “antithesis to exclusive art establishments and galleries … formed because of the need for an accessible place where the exchange of visual ideas can become a familiar reality”.



Today the internationally renowned Ikon gallery believes those ideas still hold true, even though it has grown way beyond anything the founders could imagine. “I feel very much that we’re operating with the same philosophy that was articulated by the artists originally,” said the director Jonathan Watkins. “We’re operating in the same spirit.”



On Friday, Ikon will open a greatest hits show in which artists including Antony Gormley, Fiona Banner, Ryan Gander, Julian Opie, Martin Creed and Lee Bul have donated works that will then be auctioned to create an endowment fund that will be used for the gallery’s future artistic programme as well as commissioning new work.

Hundreds of artists have reason to be grateful to Ikon, which often gives up and coming artists a break at crucial moments in their career. One of those was the conceptual artist Gander. “It is an institution that invests in its instinct,” he said. “It doesn’t wait for the market to suggest what is interesting and what should be contributing to the history of art.

“It has a bravado attitude as well. Maybe because it’s outside London, it doesn’t feel it is answerable to anybody – it takes really strong, ballsy decisions and more often than not they pay off.”



Jesse Bruton, now 82 and one of the founding artists, admits that much of what he sees at Ikon today mystifies him. But that is as it should be, he said. There were many Birmingham shoppers mystified by what they were doing back in 1965 when they opened an exhibition of John Salt’s combine harvester blade-inspired abstracts.

Bruton was one of a group of four founding artists, along with Robert Groves, Sylvani Merilion and David Prentice, who were frustrated at the moribund art scene in Birmingham. Thanks to the generosity of art lovers Angus Skene, finance officer at the university, and his wife Midge, they set about finding a venue to showcase the work of contemporary artists.

They decided that visibility was key, so took out a three-year lease on the kiosk in the Bullring, although the whole project was nearly derailed by a freak accident when a lorry crashed through a concrete barrier above it.

After three years, Ikon moved to a decommissioned mortuary in Swallow Street that Bruton still remembers fondly. “Partly because I put the ceiling up … it was 2,000 sq ft of asbestos.” In 1972, Ikon moved to a shopping centre above New Street station, and in 1978 to a former carpet shop opposite the then Alexandra Theatre. It moved to its present Brindleyplace home in 1997 and seems settled there, although size is an issue.

Ikon has a considerable international reputation and has many off-site projects, but Watkins admits: “Ikon isn’t very big, let’s face it. This is the second biggest city in the country and for contemporary art, the flagship institution is the size of the Whitechapel whereas actually it should be the size of Tate Modern.

“There’s no reason this city should not be as ambitious as that. I’ve just been in Poland and they are building new museums in Warsaw and Gdansk – they realise culture-led regeneration is the way to go, everywhere you go in China they get it.”

Plans for a museum of contemporary art in Birmingham were shelved several years ago as the city concentrated on its £189m library, which the council is now struggling to afford.

Watkins still bangs the drum for a new museum, but accepts it is not on the cards any time soon. The city “needs to see it not as a donation to a charitable cause but as an investment in the quality of life of the city”, he said. “That will make companies want to arrive here, students want to stay here, people want to come on holiday.”

How many people across Europe, he asks, go for breaks in Barcelona? How many go to Birmingham? “I know that Birmingham is great, it is has got great potential, is full of interesting secrets, but it is not declaring itself as a cultural force in the way it should.”

The auction is a first for Ikon. After the exhibition, the works, which will also include artists Cornelia Parker, George Shaw, Roger Hiorns and Hurvin Anderson, will be sold at Sotheby’s in London on 2 July.

Watkins hopes that the Ikon in 2015 holds to the values of 1965. Certainly Bruton believes it does – “under Jonathan it has developed far beyond anything we could have envisaged” – although he admits not all the shows are to his taste. “Jess is my harshest critic and doesn’t like a lot of the things we’ve shown,” said Watkins. “But on the other hand, I don’t want everyone to love it.”

Bruton agrees: “I’m old. There are young artists and I do find a lot of the work difficult to relate to, but then I expect that.”

• There is a private tour of Artists for Ikon for Guardian Members on Friday 24 April. Tickets £5. Find out more here.

