Thursday, August 9, 2012

In search of the bucolic













Another plug, this time for an exhibition organised by the artist and photographer Andrew Cross. A Bucolic Frolic: Distractions from the Modern "takes a look at tendencies in English art, design and music which indicate a refusal to accept an inevitable onslaught of economic and technological modernity".  

This is of particular interest to me at the moment as I'm hoping that next year's teaching studio will be looking at the idea of the rural, and the role or place of modernism within it. It also gives me an excuse to post up a picture by Roger Dean - who features in the exhibition - something I've been meaning to do for a while. Dean's beyond-the-pale sci-fi utopian fantasies are interesting not only for a kind of kitscher-than-thou cheesinesss but for a more unsettling combination of technological utopianism and rural romanticism, two things its almost impossible to imagine co-existing today.

While we're about the relationship of ruralism and modernity, here's a second link to an interesting exhibition/event curated by Postworks, a collaborative practice involving architect Matthew Butcher and artist Melissa Appleton. Writtle Calling takes the form of a temporary radio station broadcasting from Writtle in the Essex countryside, home to Marconi and the first regular radio broadcast. 

2 comments:

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John Holland said...

For some time now I've been trying to sell the idea of a Dean/Turner exhibition at Tate Britain.
Of course, they think I'm trying to be funny- but I suspect they know that Dean would blow Turner out of the water. And then send him over a planet-sized waterfall in space.