Ikon Gallery celebrates Balraj Khanna with his first major survey exhibition

Ikon Gallery has opened one of the most rewarding exhibitions of Birmingham's autumn. Lines of Flight is the first major survey of British-Indian artist Balraj Khanna (1939 to 2024), bringing together 40 paintings made over six decades and offering the most comprehensive overview yet of his career as a painter, writer and curator.

Khanna's story is remarkable. A self-taught artist, he witnessed the Partition of India in 1947 before moving to London in 1962. After a road accident in 1965, a period of recuperation near Metz in France proved pivotal. Immersed in the forest there, he began developing a highly individual abstraction, built from layered surfaces, line and string, organic and geometric forms and a strong sense of rhythm.

The exhibition sets rarely seen works from the 1960s and 70s alongside large-scale compositions from the 1970s to the early 2000s, exploring migration, Partition, identity, belonging and childhood memories of the Punjab.

There is a lovely Birmingham connection too. The show celebrates Astral Dance (2001), Khanna's monumental painted safety curtain for Birmingham Hippodrome, which marks its 25th anniversary this year. Ikon has organised tours of the curtain at the Hippodrome, alongside a film screening, family workshops exploring Khanna's stencil technique and a conversation with members of his family.

It is a fitting show for a gallery with a proud independent spirit. Ikon grew from a group of Birmingham artists whose 1964 prospectus declared it "an antithesis to exclusive art establishments and galleries". It began as a 'gallery without walls', then took up residence in 1965 in an octagonal glass kiosk in the Bullring. Today it occupies the Grade II listed, neo-Gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877.

Ikon's work reaches well beyond its walls, with an Art in Prisons programme, a Creative Health strand exploring art and wellbeing, and a youth programme based aboard Slow Boat, a converted narrowboat.

Lines of Flight runs until 21 February 2027 on the first and second floors, open Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 5pm. Entry is free, with donations welcome. A free digital guide is available on Bloomberg Connects.

Plan your visit to 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, on the Ikon Gallery website.