Exhibition

To Dream Effectively

12 Sep 2020 – 10 Jan 2021

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
Closed
Wednesday
10:00 – 17:00
Thursday
10:00 – 17:00
Friday
10:00 – 17:00
Saturday
10:00 – 17:00
Sunday
10:00 – 16:00

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Focal Point Gallery

Southend-on-Sea
England, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • Southend Victoria/Southend Central
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‘To Dream Effectively’ is a group exhibition across Focal Point Gallery, Big Screen Southend and Southend High Street that brings together international artists whose work offers inventive, and at times cautionary reflections on a future that is conditional on how we dream it to be.

About

Larry Achiampong, Sophia Al-Maria, A.S.T. (Alliance of the Southern Triangle), Diann Bauer, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Caspar Heinemann, Leyla Pillai, Tabita Rezaire, Himali Singh Soin, Emilija Škarnultyė, Rosie Grace Ward

‘To Dream Effectively’ is a group exhibition across Focal Point Gallery, Big Screen Southend and Southend High Street that brings together international artists whose work offers inventive, and at times cautionary reflections on a future that is conditional on how we dream it to be. It takes inspiration from the ground-breaking novels of science-fiction writer Ursula K Le. Guin (1929 to 2018), in particular The Lathe of Heaven, 1971, which was strongly influenced by the principles of Taoism (an ancient philosophical and religious belief of Chinese origin that emphasises living in harmony with ‘the Way’). In this book, the main character George Orr’s dreams alter past and present reality, leading to his quest to ‘dream effectively’. In this future world, set in the year 2002 in Portland Oregon, global warming has wrought havoc on the quality of life everywhere, there is extreme deprivation for much of the huge world population and war rages in the Middle East. Yet with the unwelcome inventions of an ambitious psychiatrist, Dr Haber, Orr’s dreams have unintended consequences, posing philosophical – and political – questions around the ethics and motivations of who gets to control current and future realities.

A wide range of works, including film, wall drawing, video game, sculpture and performance encompass the cosmic and geological to the ecological and ethical, prioritising non-binary and global narratives which offer a powerful alternative to the mainstream histories and viewpoints that dominate our past and present realities.

At Focal Point Gallery, Emilija Škarnultyė will present a new immersive cinematic installation that offers a meditation on the ruins of humanity as seen from a distant future, in which present advanced technology such as nuclear reactors have become wreckage at the bottom of the ocean. With Southend-on-Sea in the first 10% of the country that will be underwater if sea-levels rise, this work offers a prescient reminder that we must work to maintain a balanced equilibrium between land and sea.

Danielle Brathwaite Shirley presents an animated film about the effects of trans tourism and how to protect those who are most at risk of being erased by history. Here speculative fiction is used to re-imagine those from the past that have been lost. The act of crafting Pro Black and Trans environments can help us visualise futures that seek to appreciate Black Trans existence. A world that is healthy for Black Trans people to live in. Challenging the idea of what an archive can be and how they are accessed, Resurrections Lands offers an alternative look into what it means to archive someone that history once erased.

In Premium Connect, 2017, Tabita Rezaire explores spirituality, the fungi underworld, communication and quantum systems to investigate the cybernetic spaces where the organic, spiritual and technological worlds connect.

Diann Bauer will make a new wall drawing for FPG’s Window Gallery, combined with the work of A.S.T. (Alliance of the Southern Triangle) on Big Screen Southend to use art as a platform to broaden interdisciplinary collaboration about Cities and climate change.

In The Future Was Desert, 2017, Sophia Al Maria explores complex geopolitical dependencies between fossil-fuel, wealth and environmental devastation in the Gulf Region through a post-human dreamscape which evokes J.G. Ballard’s comment that “Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time.”

Situated in another of Earth’s extreme environments – the Arctic and Antarctic polar circles – Himali Singh Soin’s ongoing series of interdisciplinary works, we are opposite like that, 2017 – present, creates fictional myths through the potential future of an alien figure foraging in a shifting landscape of receding glaciers and emerging geology. 

An ambitious new piece by Rosie Grace Ward for FPG’s annual Railway Bridge commission on Southend High Street will consist of two site-specific artworks. Drawing inspiration from Southend’s Anglo-Saxon history, each panel, one decorative, one figurative, depict both sides of an intricately carved slab of stone, digitally rendered from Ward’s hand painted watercolours. Intended to be read from left to right, the sequence of imagery combines the earthly, the religious and the preposterous to symbolise that ‘progress’ does not serve all people equally and is currently destroying the delicate symbiosis between nature and humanity. The commission will be on view from 11 July to 13 October. For more information, please see here.

Leyla Pillai, an artist and writer, will present an event connecting the spaces between sound and visual culture. Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing she will transport participants to otherworldly places through an immersive live event where ambient music, spoken word and the human body meet.

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