Structurescapes
Venue: University Gallery, University of EssexCurators: Priscilla Buschinelli, Elli-Anna Peristeraki, Harriet Pratt & Carly Turnage
Date: 1st June 2010
Jane Prophet, Sachiyo Nishimura, Léon Ferrari and Sinta Werner.
The University of Essex Gallery, Arts on 5 presented Structurescapes, an exhibition exploring images of rural and urban constructed environments to reveal how utopian and dystopian principles manifest themselves in our everyday surroundings.
Curated by MA Gallery Studies and Critical Curating students at the University of Essex, the exhibition used a range of different media including photography, video projection, ink on paper and floor installation to give a sensorial and wide ranging viewing experience.
Structurescapes aimed to reveal what is produced when utopian and dystopian ideologies meet in the juxtaposition of differing constructed ideals. This was to be done through the revelation of the fine line between these two concepts. This fine line can be termed as the Picturesque.
The exhibition was based upon the premise that all environments whether natural or built are constructed. Environments are synthetically arranged to reveal the idealisms of the creator. However, when differing ideals are juxtaposed their imperfections are emphasised as no utopian construction can ever be finite, as utopianism is subjective.
The exhibition was presented at the University of Essex Gallery in Wivenhoe Park, Essex. As a picturesque estate, Wivenhoe Park is the very embodiment of these ideals, and with the juxtaposition of the Kenneth Caplon brutalist concrete architecture of the University campus buildings, this estate enacts the very contradictions and continuities that this exhibition explores.
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