The annual Museum of Futures Visual Literatures exhibition
has run with remarkable energy, community and joy for four years, with packed themed exhibitions in 2017 (Visual Literature) 2018 (Scribbling and Scrawling) 2019 (Photo Literature) and 2020 (Notational Unfinished Literature). The exhibition runs with open calls, drawing in international and local artists alongside students and staff at Kingston University. Please scroll down to the see remarkable pictures of the exhibitors and happenings.
The theme for 2021 will be Concrete Literature.
A Notational Literature, The (Un)finished Draft
The 4th annual Museum of Futures Exhibition
February Tuesday 18th 2020 to March Tuesday 17th 2020
The Museum of Futures, 117 Brighton Rd, Surbiton KT6 5NJ, UK
The poem, the story, the poster, the literary artwork as Note. Note as in draft, as in graphic symbol, as in discovered text. Note as in reminder, forgotten, perhaps scrawled, handwritten, typed or digital. Note on a phone, in a notebook, on a bus. The notebook as the poem, the word doc draft as the final story, because the author intervened. An exhibition that celebrates the process over the product, that takes pleasure, and pain, in the inevitable unfinished, in that which points to a future finality that’ll never come.
With works by Patrick Cosgrove, Martin Wakefield, Katerina Koulouri, Cleary Mallard, Sarah Dawson, Astra Papachristodoulou, Maria Omena, Jasmine Barrett, Alex Hegazy, Djahane Zair, Stephen Emmerson, Milly Webster, Andrew Milward, Danielle Moles, Jacqueline Ennis Cole, Joe Turrent, Michael Sutton, Jon Stone, Beth Kingston-Lee, Mike Weston, Julia Rose Lewis, Alison Graham, Ryan Ormonde, Simon Tyrrell, Saradha Soobrayen, Gabriella Buckner, Nic Stringer, Oscar Mardell, Laurensia Puia, Marcia Knight Latter, Flora Esther Nicholson, SJ Fowler et al.
The exhibition is curated by SJ Fowler and Gabriella Buckner, Marcia Knight Latter, Maria Omena, Jasmine Barrett, Djahane Zair and Aifric Kyne.
The Museum of Futures is a dynamic community arts space that has engaged Surbiton residents, families and businesses since 2015 and curated by The Community Brain CIC, the exhibition aims to showcase early career poets and artists alongside more experienced practitioners and build on the community, beginning new relationships and collaborations, that already surround this wonderful venue. www.museumoffutures.org
Phoetry / Poetography / Photographic Literature : The third annual Museum of Futures Writers’ Centre Kingston Visual Literature Exhibition : February 21st to March 5th 2019
The third annual exhibition of visual literature at Surbiton’s remarkable Museum of Futures. With nearly 30 artists exhibiting new works that take on the intersections between poetry / literature and photography as an act of exploration, of paradox, of possibility. Two mediums living through different creative realities - one purely linguistic, the other visual, one built of light, upon technology, the other originary in the human mind. This exhibition aims to bring together photographers, poets, artists, writers and everyone in between to show what these two fields might create when a cohesive combination evidences literature that isn’t just text, or discourse, or opinion, and photography that isn’t just pictorial.
Featuring works by Patrick Cosgrove, Albert Pellicer, Iris Colomb, Lisa Kiew, Astra Papachristodoulou, Bruno Neiva, Sarah Dawson, Katerina Koulouri, Julia Rose Lewis, James Caley, Freya Harwood Bond, Simona Nastac, Aleksandr Zapol, SJ Fowler, Karen Sandhu, Martin Wakefield, Emilee Moyce, Mark Chamberlain, Clover Peake, Han Smith, Paul Hawkins, Ruby Wroe, Jacqui Ennis Cole, Vilde Torset, Sara Upstone, Joe Turrent, Dominic Jaeckle, Susie Campbell, Sabine Thoele, Hoagy Houghton, Lucy Furlong, Steffi Klenz, Emily Garvey, Yvonne Litschel, Olga Kolesnikova, Natalie Whitaker.
Curated by SJ Fowler with James Caley, Marcia Knight Latter, Yvonne Litschel and Olga Kolesnikova.
The Museum of Futures is a dynamic community arts space that has engaged Surbiton residents, families and businesses since 2015 and curated by The Community Brain CIC, the exhibition aims to showcase early career poets and artists alongside more experienced practitioners and build on the community, beginning new relationships and collaborations, that already surround this wonderful venue. www.museumoffutures.org
Museum of Futures: Visual Poetry Exhibition
Scribbling and scrawling : Feb 22nd to March 21st 2018
www.museumoffutures.org / 117 Brighton Rd, Surbiton KT6 5NJ / Gallery
curated by Molly Bergin, Yvonne Litschel, Olga Kolesnikova and SJ Fowler.
Lisa Kiew / Simone Kay / Adam Baron / Patrick Cosgrove / Alan Boyce / Simon Tyrell / Lucy Furlong / Yvonne Litschel / Molly Bergin / Dacy Lim / Silje Ree / Julia Rose Lewis / Olga Kolesnikova / Denise McCulloch / MJ Weller / Daniele Pantano / Paul Hawkins / Daniel Lehan / Deborah Sibbald / Mark Jackson / Lucy Crump / Alison Miller / Paul Hawkins / Cleary Mallard / Linda Black / Sarah Dawson / Mendoza / Jaclyn Del Guidice / Phoebe Robertson / Hugh Hadfield / Astra Papachristodoulou / Nicole Polonsky / Matthew Kay / Susie Campbell / Katerina Koulouri / Mendoza
An exhibition that presented new visual literature on the theme of Scribbling and Scrawling - works that explored the handmade, the illegible, the dirty, the rough, the visual, the material, the calligraphic, the link - works which resist their content and express their context. Works that celebrate the notation, the forgotten, the colourful. This exhibition aimed to bring together generations, creative communities, including many students and faculty from Kingston University, alongside those local or connected to the region.
Partnering with the Museum of Futures - a dynamic community arts space that has engaged Surbiton residents, families and businesses since 2015 and curated by The Community Brain CIC, the exhibition aims to showcase early career poets and artists alongside more experienced practitioners and build on the community, beginning new relationships and collaborations, that already surround this wonderful venue. The engagement with themes of suburbia, the Seething mythos and the humour so prevalent in the Museum of Futuresenterprise will undoubtedly also influence the exhibition's aesthetic.
Museum of Futures:
Visual Poetry Exhibition I Feb 23rd to March 12th 2017
Over forty poets and artists local or connected to the Surbiton or Kingston area present brand new works especially made for this group exhibition. Exploring the visual and material properties of language through concrete poems, abstract painting, asemic writing and many other avant-garde techniques, this exhibition aims to bring together generations, creative communities, including many students and faculty from Kingston University, as well as methodologies, through a shared engagement with the participants localism.
Visit www.theenemiesproject.com/futures for more info.
With new works from Imogen Abed / Ed Arantus / Tim Atkins / Adam Baron / Hannah Bates / Molly Bergin / Susie Campbell / Zakia Carpenter-Hall / Ripley Chandler / Patrick Cosgrove / Sarah Dawson / Thomas Duggan / SJ Fowler / Lucy Furlong / Penny Goring / Yasmine Griffiths-Williams / Mark Harris / Megan Haycock / Ann Hulland / Imo Jeffes / Dean Kenning / Yessica Klein / Olga Kolesnikova / Julia Lewis / Dacy Lim / Cleary Mallard / Raif Mansell / Alison Miller / Matthew Navey / Camilla Nelson / Ronan O'Brien / Albert Pellicer / Zoe Radford / Shauna Darling Robertson / David Russomano / Elly Rutherford / Anna Smallman / Agnieszka Studzinska / Virna Teixeira / Simon Tyrrell / Alice Willis // Curated by SJ Fowler with assistant curators Megan Haycock, Molly Bergin, Olga Kolesnikova, Dacy Lim and Matt Navey.
Pictures by Alexander Kell.