Alternative Guide to the Universe guest starring The Museum of Everything

About

The Alternative Guide to the Universe explores the work of self-taught artists and architects, fringe physicists and visionary inventors, all of whom offer bracingly unorthodox perspectives on the world we live in. Inspiringly original and bracingly eccentric, their work re-imagines our social and cultural conventions in ways that fearlessly depart from accepted ways of thinking. Contributors to the exhibition explore fictional identities and design imaginary cities; they build healing machines and record the unseen energy flows of our bodies. They speculate on mysteries of time and space; create devices for time travel and communication with other dimensions; and fashion new letter forms designed to liberate the alphabet from the strictures of Western civilization. Taken together, their work conjures a kind of a parallel universe where ingenuity and inventiveness trump common sense and received wisdom. Alternative Guide to the Universe features special guest star The Museum of Everything in the Hayward Gallery Project Space - that world-famous wandering space for unintentional, untrained, undiscovered, unclassifiable, unknowable, undeniable and unforgettable artists of modern times ... like legendary rock god Nek Chand Saini, the esteemed creator of the world's greatest art environment. Established in 2009, the museum has welcomed over 500,000 visitors to its ambitious installations across the globe and is one of the leading international advocates for self-taught and non-traditional art. Collaborators include major artists, curators, writers and thinkers, alongside institutions such as Tate Modern, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture and Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli. Recent projects in 2013 include installations in Paris, Moscow and Il Palazzo di Everything at the Venice Bienniale. It all started with Exhibition #1 - The Museum of Everything's inaugural show in Primrose Hill - where the very first room contained sculptures by Nek Chand. This collaboration with Hayward Gallery is a recollection and celebration of that special time, in association with the artist himself and the Nek Chand Foundation.