Son of Utopian Realism

After a bit of a break which involved tying up phase one of Utopian Realism (evaluation forms etc..) Mair and I have managed to get some time together this week.

Wednesday 24th April saw us giving a talk about the Utopian Realism project to a group of artists in Shrewsbury.

The artists we were talking with in Shrewsbury are part of a group called 'Re:Collect' and are involved with the redevelopment of Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery

 (http://www.shrewsburymuseums.com/news/index.html?sid=acf1fe7ae2680be2c29704ee8734ee35 )

It felt like a really exciting time for the artistic community of Shrewsbury and we were fortunate to have timed our talk in such a way that we could attend another artist's talk the next day. Alison Craighead (of Craighead and Thomson) gave a great talk about the duo's involvement with a series of new commissions for the museum and their work with digital media and internet data streams.

This was part of a series of talks, there are two more to go, see link below for more details.
http://www.shrewsburymuseums.com/exhibitions

Mair and I will be posting regularly on the blog again as we explore more ideas that have emerged from the project and start planning for phase two.

A Decaying Craft

A few shots of the 'Bureau Vivant' as it was installed in the Robert Owen Museum in Newtown. It seemed fitting at the end of the first phase of our project to come back to the original phrase that caught our attention and became the title of the project, 'Utopian Realism'. I thought back to the homely crafts of the Victorian era, and found it pleasing to imagine using a pomander as a vehicle to communicate a radical vision of society. It also felt fitting that the pomander be made using a high status fruit such as a pineapple. Pressing those sharp tack-like cloves into the fragrant and dripping yellow flesh was an odd mixture of pleasure and pain. The sheer bulk of juicy flesh spelled the downfall of the pomander; it never made it's way in to posterity as the antiseptic qualities of the cloves were not enough to stave off mould and eventual deterioration.

A sneak preview

"A you're adorable........"

One of Bridget's sculptures in the Oriel Davies Gallery education room.

The next show

Mair and I have been busy in our studios getting ready for this next show. It will be spread across two venues in Newtown, Powys, Mid Wales.

 Oriel Davies Gallery is a great regional venue showing a variety of contemporary art from across the UK and beyond.

The Robert Owen Memorial Museum is a compact repository of artefacts from Robert Owen's life highlighting his global influence on the co operative movement.

The two venues are right in the centre of Newtown  less than 5 minutes walk away from each other.

Oriel Davies Gallery link

Follow this link for a wee promo of our next show in Newtown, mid Wales

www.orieldavies.org/en/events/utopian-realism

working towards next show

Mair and I are now busy working away on ideas for the next show. It will be a two venue show in the Oriel Davies Gallery and The Robert Owen Memorial Museum, both in Newtown,  Mid Wales. It's due to open on the 17th November, so if you are in the area please do pop by.

The image above is a painting I have made using text written by Robert Owen describing his laws for the creation of ideal communities or "villages of co operation".

The Robinson Institute

I am very excited about an exhibition on at Tate Britain at the moment and hopefully between now and October I will get down to London to see it.

It is a commissioned work by Patrick Keiller called The Robinson Institute in which Keiller has brought together a number of works from the Tate collection in order to take visitors on a journey to the heart of landscape and its many cultural implications. The Robinson of the show title is a fictional character in several of Keiller's film works (Robinson in Space and Robinson in Ruins for example). Through his eyes we see contemporary British landscape as he travels with his companion (who is the narrator in the films) to various sites of historical significance.

Keiller's brilliantly researched works provide an insight into the political and socio- economic health of the country and have a wry sense of humour.

There are several essays available on line about the AHRC funded research project he is involved with (called the future of landscape and the moving image*), but this one is a bit shorter and covers several issues that Mair and I have touched upon in our research during the Utopian Realism project.
www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/patrick_keiller/essay(1).html

* The ‘overall objective’ of the research, as spelled out in the application, was:

‘To identify, understand and document aspects of the current global predicament in the UK’s landscape, and explore its histories and possible futures by creating images and texts, and combinations of both, which together constitute a critique and a document of the UK’s landscape at a particular point in its history, in a period characterised by conflict and anxiety about the future.’

Taken from Doreen Massey's Essay Landscape/space/politics: an essay