Patrick Staff: The Foundation

The Institute of Modern Art (IMA) is pleased to present a major film installation by Patrick Staff, The Foundation, co-commissioned with Chisenhale Gallery, London; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; and Spike Island, Bristol. In this new work, Staff explores queer intergenerational relationships negotiated through historical materials. The film combines footage shot at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles – home to the archive of the erotic artist and gay icon and a community of people that care for it – with choreographic sequences shot within a specially constructed set.

The legacy of Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen (1920–91), better known as Tom of Finland, spans multiple generations. Tom of Finland's work made a considerable impact on masculine representation and imagery in post-war gay culture. Rather than focusing on Tom of Finland's work, however, Staff's film evokes the foundation as a set of relations. Staff explores how a collection is formed and constituted; the communities that produce and are produced by a body of work; and ideas of intergenerational relationships and care. Through observational footage of the house, its collections and its inhabitants, the foundation is revealed as a domestic environment, a libidinal space, archive, office and community centre; a private space which is also the home of a public-facing organisation and the source of a widely dispersed body of images.

Patrick Staff is based in London and Los Angeles. Selected exhibitions, screenings, and performances include Scaffold see Scaffold, The Showroom, London; Art Turning Left, Tate Liverpool; L'Heure Des Sorcieres, Le Quartier, France (all 2014); Mental effort Before Action: 1-5A-5B, South London Gallery; A Factory As It Might Be (Bournville), International Project Space, Birmingham; Society is a Workshop, Banff Centre, Canada (all 2013); and Chewing Gum for the Social Body, The Tanks, Tate Modern, London (2012). Staff took part in the LUX Associate Artists Programme in 2010/11 and was the inaugural White Building/Lux Collection Residency artist (2014).

The Foundation Publication A book departing from the project is being released in conjunction with the exhibition and features texts by Isla Leaver-Yap and Catherine Lord, as well as an interview with Staff and the Tom of Finland Foundation's S.R. Sharp. The publication is a collaboration between Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG), Chisenhale Gallery, and Spike Island. It is published by IMA, Mousse Publishing, and CAG.