MIRRORCITY
London artists on fiction and reality
14 October 2014–4 January 2015
Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX
“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
–Italo Calvino
MIRRORCITY features recent work and new commissions by key emerging and established artists working in London who all seek to address the dilemmas, realities and consequences of living in our digital age.
By the turn of the millennium, novelist J.G. Ballard believed that reality had already exceeded the visions conjured by mid 20th-century science fiction. In recent years, artists have increasingly made use of these visions as a way to investigate the present. MIRRORCITY focuses on practices that are informed by science fiction, as well as by the emergence of new speculative philosophies and our increasing reliance on digital technology. While artists have always created alternative realities, these artists explore the places where digital and physical realms overlap and intersect. Building on a history in which artists have been at the forefront of investigating the effect of broad social, political and technological changes on human experience, this exhibition asks: “what is our current experience of reality?”
The artists in MIRRORCITY use multi-layered approaches and fictions to explore “in-between” spaces within the ever-growing realms of our lived experience. Blurring the boundaries between internal and external worlds, the artists penetrate alternative spaces where the imagined, the physical and the virtual meet. The title of the exhibition takes inspiration from Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film Orphée, where a mirror is a portal to a shadowy world similar to our own, but subtly different—a place of imagination. In the 21st century, thanks to our increasing dependence on the virtual world of the internet, we inhabit something similar to Orpheus’s shadowy mirror-space. We live our lives between two worlds: the virtual and the physical. It is this mirror-space, this land of the in-between, that the artists in this exhibition seek to address.
Presenting artworks in a wide variety of media—including painting, film and video, sculpture, drawing, sound and performance—the exhibition addresses the effect of the digital on our lived experience. The engagement, innovation and complexity of the works selected for MIRRORCITY also reflects the shifting, complex and multi-faceted nature of London itself. For the artists in this exhibition London is a place where they can question and negotiate the space into which art is supposed to fit, as well as push at its boundaries. MIRRORCITY presents work that uses the structures of the city as a platform for cultural practices, aesthetics and forms that instigate social change, give insights into mechanisms of power and formulate possible languages of resistance.
Accompanying the exhibition is a weekend of artist-led events that transform the gallery and its surrounding areas into a collaborative forum for debate and discussion. Over four days in November (Thursday 13 to Sunday 16) the gallery hosts workshops, talks, live music and screenings that provide unprecedented access to the artists and themes of MIRRORCITY.
Artists in the exhibition are Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq, Michael Dean, Tim Etchells, Anne Hardy, Susan Hiller, LuckyPDF, Lloyd Corporation, Helen Marten, Ursula Mayer, Emma McNally, Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, Katrina Palmer, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Laure Prouvost, Aura Satz, Hannah Sawtell, Lindsay Seers, Tai Shani, Daniel Sinsel, John Stezaker, Volumes Project, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and James Bridle.
MIRRORCITY is curated by Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery.
For more information on MIRRORCITY and all accompanying events, see mirrorcity.southbankcentre.co.uk.
Publication: MIRRORCITY is accompanied by a “newspaper” publication edited by Tom McCarthy—a collaborative project featuring newly commissioned texts and images from artists included in the show and writers Chloe Aridjis, Stewart Home and Deborah Levy. It is accompanied by a “supplement” featuring images from the exhibition and an introductory text by curator Stephanie Rosenthal.
