Artists Curating

Catalogue for Whitworth Art Gallery exhibtion William Morris ‘Ministering to the Swinish Luxuary of the Rich’ curated by David Mabb. Includes The Colonisation of Utopia by Steve Edwards; William Morris: 'Ministering to the Swinish Luxuary of the Rich' by David Mabb and Four Walls: Morris and Ornament by Caroline Arscott.
Reviewed by Dave Beech https://www.academia.edu/11050597/As_It_Might_Be

Utopia Ltd. toured from Wexford Art Centre to the Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland. Exploring the relationship between utopian ideas and commodification, it brought together artwork by Blaise Drummond, Brendan Earley, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, David Mabb, Lizi Sanchez and Mary-Ruth Walsh. The seven artists’ work opens up a debate on the utopian within painting, sculpture, architecture, design and video. The works in Utopia Ltd. represent modernist architecture and design in its various mutations within a spectacularised, commodified 20th century consumer society. In these works, the utopian dream seems to burst through again and again, despite rather than because of the permutations of commodity culture. By picturing the past, present and possible future the works destabilise fixed linear time. By rescuing, reclaiming and re-picturing, Utopia Ltd. suggests that utopian ideas persist in contemporary art, making a provocative demand on the viewer’s capacity to produce utopian dreams of their own. The exhibition’s title Utopia Ltd. is a satirical echo of an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan, Utopia (Limited) or, The Flowers of Progress (1893), in which a utopian colony is turned into a joint stock company.

Review by Kitty Rogers http://papervisualart.com/2011/07/29/utopia-ltd-group-show-the-highlanes-gallery-drogheda-29-april-3-august-2011/