Introducing Auto Italia

Overview

The tour will also offer insights into artist-led spaces and highlight our professional development opportunities for students and young artists. This includes Art/Work Association, our free forum for early-career creatives, and our Volunteer Forum, which offers hands-on experience in exhibition installation and deinstallation across our four annual shows. Both opportunities offer an accessible first step into professional practice.

We will also be visiting 'Safety Curtain' - a solo exhibition of newly commissioned works by UK-based artist Alex Margo Arden.

Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, ‘Safety Curtain’ recovers evidence of recent actions by climate activists in museums and art galleries, considering how such actions change the histories of the artworks they have interjected. The exhibition speaks to the long history of protests in which artefacts have been targeted, including direct action by the suffragettes between 1913 and 1914, along with the vandalism of plaster cast collections during the 1960s student protests. With a new wave of climate activism taking artworks as their aim, tensions between activists and cultural institutions have reemerged, raising questions of value, impact and access.⁠

Auto Italia is a non-profit contemporary visual arts organisation. Based in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Auto Italia is dedicated to researching, producing and exhibiting work at the intersection of queer studies, activism and social change.

The gallery is fully step-free and has accessible toilets. Exhibition text is available in large print, and chairs will be provided for those who would like to sit and rest during their visit.

Photo Credit: Alex Margo Arden, Safety Curtain, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Auto Italia​

Launching in 2025 Arts SU is pleased to announce our 'Connection and Collaboration' strand built to improve networks, creative connections and communities of practice. We are excited to commence building an informal network of partners platforming the use of collectivity as a method of creative development and production.

Previous visits - Assemblage Collective @ The Foundling Museum