Guest from the Future: Maria Chevska and Simon Morley

About

This exhibition is a collaboration between artists Maria Chevska and Simon Morley, which takes the meeting of poet Anna Akhmatova and philosopher Isaiah Berlin in St. Petersburg, 1945 as inspiration to explore concepts of liberty and art, anarchism and communism, and the relationship between art and politics in the twentieth century. The exhibition title, Guest from the Future, is a direct reference of Akhmatova's description of Berlin in her ‘Poem without a Hero', written after their meeting. Maria Chevska is a visual artist who lives and works in London and since 1991, has been a Professor of Fine Art at the Ruskin School, University of Oxford. Simon Morley is a visual artist, writer and editor of several publications including Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art, 2003, and The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, 2010, published by Whitechapel Art Gallery and MIT Press. Guest from the Future will be accompanied by a unique catalogue designed by the artists, with an introduction to the exhibition by Simon Morley and essay by Chris Townsend, Professor in the Department of Media Art, Royal Holloway, University of London and author of numerous books on modern and contemporary art including the forthcoming book Modernism and Death: the body, the spectre and modernity, to be published 2011.