Failed Utopias

Inclusion in group exhibition curated by Alex Veness. Artists include: Nelson Diplexcito; Geraint Evans; Vineta Kaulaca; Zoë Mendelson; Howard Rogers; Mike Silva; Iain Sinclair; Neal Tait; Alex Veness.

Failed Utopias defines a fundamental question about the present: looking back over a remarkable century, in which advanced technology and dynamic new social models failed in their grand promises, how do we understand and experience this catastrophe?

Failed Utopias presents contemporary artists posing aspects of this enduring failure, and possibilities for salvation within it. Paintings are predominant in the exhibition, while works in other forms are welcome.
Some of the artists in Failed Utopias reflect on past revolutionary ideals and imaginary futures e.g. the impact of punk subculture; the false promise of space travel for all, life in Europe’s eastern bloc between the 1950s and the collapse of Soviet state communism in the 1990s. Others interpret ways by which our understanding of everyday experience in the global west failed to be transformed by modernism, once so positively geared towards radically new perspectives on consciousness and innovative social models.

Today, these questions are commonplace in academic publications, news articles and mass media documentaries, yet they are rarely presented as works drawn from personal experience by visual artists. Bringing together artists with a specific interest in expressing their own responses to this predominant issue, Failed Utopias presents new perspectives to existing accounts of our common situation.

• http://charliesmithlondon.com/projects/a...
• https://arcadecardiff.co.uk/2015/04/14/g...