:Xenotopia; a curated exhibition
- Submitting institution
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De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32085
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Gibberd Gallery, Civic Centre, Harlow, UK
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
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- Year of first exhibition
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- :Xenotopia researches Psychogeography through the expanded field of fine art printmaking. The exhibition brought together Emily Allchurch, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Berenika Boberska, Pablo Bronstein, Rachel Clewlow, Noémie Goudal, Sarah Anne Johnson, Katherine Jones, Catriona Leahy, Theo Miller, Paul Noble, Grayson Perry, David Price and Jenny Wiener to explore ‘out-of-place places’, particularly strange, fictitious architecture, and ‘xenospaces’, imagined, meta-geographic locations that exist only theoretically, ethereally or subconsciously. ‘Xenotopia’ is a term coined by British travel writer Robert McFarlane to describe an uncanny landscape. Xeno is the Greek word for ‘other’, or that which is ‘different in origin’, while topia is the suffix deployed by Thomas Moore in the title of his celebrated 1516 book, Utopia – a work of political philosophy manifested through the depiction of a fictionalized island society. My research has two parallel strands, Psychogeography and my own artist specialsism of printmaking in particular where rational actively dictates method. Each of the 14 internationally prominent artists showing in :Xenotopia offer their own unique explorations and visualisations of similarly fictional but redolent places of psycho-geographic ambiguity or putative architectural paradise. The works, which display a range of, often, tangential, anachronistic or merely tenuous connections and approaches to the printmaking medium, marry unfamiliar and idealised elements in a kind of flux where the alien meets the quotidian and the recognizable becomes unknown. :Xenotopia was partly inspired by post-war British architectural modernism and utopian social planning as embodied in ‘new towns’ such as Harlow, where the Gibberd Gallery is located. Housed within the town’s Civic Centre, the gallery, which opened in 1984, is the work of visionary Harlow architect Sir Frederick Gibberd. The exhibition generated ongoing research to exploit differing aspects of Utopian thought including the visual appearance of Utopian philosophy through printed matter. The exhibition generated writing, music and a further workshop.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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