Hayward Gallery

The House in the Sky: Artists Imagine New Utopias

02 Jul - 07 Sep 2014

© Eloise Hawser
Untitled, 2014
origami paper design
THE HOUSE IN THE SKY: ARTISTS IMAGINE NEW UTOPIAS
Helen Carmel Benigson, Eloise Hawser, Yuichi Higashionna, Marguerite Humeau, Serena Korda, Lorna Mills, Rory Pilgrim, Ujino, Yu-Chen Wang, O Zhang
2 July - 7 September 2014

Curated by Chelsea Pettitt, Assistant Curator, Hayward Touring.

As you may have noticed, London's skyline is currently undergoing the greatest change in its history.

More than 230 buildings over 20 stories high are currently proposed, approved or under construction in the capital.

For this exhibition, ten artists from home and abroad have been invited to send, by old-fashioned post, an ‘abstract communication’ musing on the changing landscape of cities and towns around the world and submitting their vision of alternative futures.

Shown inside the Brutalist structure of Hayward Gallery’s Concrete cafe, the proposals respond to the towering post-modern structures of glass and steel.

They ask whether glass boxes in the sky are the next great ‘concrete utopia’. What might this mean for the landscape of our future cities?

The abstract submissions range from works on paper to video and animation and have been sent in envelopes from all over the world.

Their visions include a house made from an abandoned military vehicle, a candy-shaped floating city above a haunting terrain, panning shots of a ‘utopian’ Los Angeles, mushroom-shaped towers with interconnecting ‘free ways’ and a digital skyscraper formed of printer-ink test pages.
 

Tags: Po-i Chen, Eloise Hawser, Yuichi Higashionna, Marguerite Humeau, Rory Pilgrim, Ujino, O Zhang