The Cosmia Festival
and the School of Art Design and Architecture
The Persistence of Utopia
Exhibition – Market
Gallery, Huddersfield HD1 2UH
The Persistence of Utopia
23rd
October – 9th November 2019
Curated by:
Nic Clear
David Smith
Exhibitors:
Stella Baraklianou, Nic Clear, Claire Diggle, Danilo
Di Mascio, Factory Fifteen, Donal Fitzpatrick, Roddy Hunter, Marko Jobst,
Spyridon Kaprinis, Sara Nesteruk, Hyun Jun Park, Christian Peterson, Andrew
Taylor, Matthew Taylor, Katrina Whitehead, Simon Woolham.
At a time when society appears to be in a
state of continual crisis, political and ecological, and there are deep
divisions over which direction our futures should take, the concept of utopia may
seem to be naïve, idealistic and irrelevant. However, in opposition to this
sense of despondency the Utopian impulse persists across contemporary cultural
practice, taking many forms from text, fine art, architecture, the moving image
and interactive arts.
The works exhibited in ‘The Persistence of
Utopia’ represent the diversity of practices across the School of Art Design
and Architecture and involve a variety of media, from painting, illustration,
photography, video and animation to architectural models and collages. The
exhibition examines how the Utopian imagination is developed particularly in
relationship to ideas of the ‘everyday’. The work explores a number of
perspectives on utopian and dystopian thinking and counteracts the wider negative
context with subtle humour and a critical affirmation of difference.
The Persistence of Utopia is produced in
association with the Cosmia Festival, a new arts festival, based in Huddersfield, dedicated to Science
Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. The first festival takes place from 25
October-to 3 November 2019.
