Celebrating the 500th anniversary of English author Thomas More’s inspirational book Utopia, ‘Paths to Utopia’ is a collection of new artworks resulting from collaboration between artists, performers, architects, technologists and King’s College London academics.
In this unique cultural hub, audiences have the chance to encounter whales, ascend to a community on the clouds and witness the ubiquitous, transcendental pursuit of creativity.
This wide-ranging exhibition features new works from Le Gun Collective, author Philip Hoare and artist Caitlin Shepherd among others. On show are films, immersive installations, durational performance, a national scratch choir and loans from The Courtauld Gallery, that allow audiences to create a figurative map of what Utopia means in today’s society.
The exhibit seeks to question what Utopia is and examine More’s vision.
With artistic collaborations that bring together health, education and creativity, this truly unique exhibition bridges art forms.
Running for three months across King’s College London’s Strand Campus and Somerset House, the work in this exhibition ranges from the ephemeral to the permanent. The exhibition is free to attend, but a number of the pieces need to be pre-booked. Throughout the summer, there will also be a series of talks related to the projects in Paths to Utopia, artdaily.com reported.
Deborah Bull, assistant principal, King’s College London said the imaginative range of works each result from a bold new collaboration between King’s academic and artists, performers, architects and technologists.
The program aims to guide audiences as they map their own journey towards a better, brighter future, exploring as they go the new and intriguing spaces where academic thinking, artistic practice and More’s enduring text converge.
Andy Franzkowiak, creative producer of the exhibit, says Utopia is a vast landscape to cover. It has been attempted thousands of times via fact and fiction and, though coined by More 500 years ago, cultures have been fascinated by the idea for millennia.
He hoped that visitors would add their own ideas, discover their own paths and find moments of Utopia in their own eventful journey. “Our particular journey is laid out by artists, academics, architects, technologists, nurses, neuroscientists, Navajo, singers, linguists, mathematicians, and many more. We really hope people will want to come back time and time again to this cultural hub to reveal new parts of their personal and unique Utopian map. One thing is for sure, no two paths are the same.”
