Paradise and disaster collide in new Surrey Art Gallery exhibition Future Memoria, opening June 22

Selections from the Gallery’s permanent collection and loaned artworks explore the concept of the future through dystopian and utopian ideals

SPONSORED POST BY Surrey Art Gallery

Jer Thorp’s Hope/Crisis, 2011, screenprint. Photo by SITE Photography.

Surrey Art Gallery has just announced that a new permanent-collection exhibition Future Memoria will open on June 22. A free reception on July 6 will feature a panel discussion at 6:30 pm with exhibiting artists Jim Adams, Miki Aurora, and jil p. weaving, moderated by assistant curator Rhys Edwards. The panel will be followed by an art performance from the PLOT community-garden project and a musical performance by Miki Aurora.

In Future Memoria, selections from the Gallery’s permanent collection, along with loaned artworks, embody both dystopian and utopian ideals and the concept of the future itself. Works by more than 30 different artists convey the role that art plays in the future’s many imaginings, exploring the collision of paradise and disaster.

Barbara Todd’s Security Blanket: Black Rain, 1996, mixed fabric quilt. Acquired with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance program. Photo by Cameron Heryet.

The exhibition traces the spectrum of futurity in all its tempting humours and horrors. Visitors will encounter lush fantasies of aesthetic splendour and abundance, as in the animations of Alex McLeod and Laura Lamb, as well as the spectres of nuclear apocalypse depicted by textile artist Barbara Todd and printmaker Doug Biden. Elsewhere, Daniel Jolliffe, Myfanwy MacLeod, and Vikky Alexander capture idealistic self-help programs, artificial landscapes, and the dominance of computational thinking and technological solutions.

Sculptures, photographs, and drawings by Keith Langergraber, Heather Kai Smith, Sylvia Grace Borda, and Tsēmā Igharas focus on the challenges of utopian thinking in practice. Their artworks explore the promise of a better life while considering the agony of social, economic, and ecological catastrophes.

Tsēmā Igharas’s Apocalypse Later, 2018, gold-leaf on steel with turf. Photo by Matthew Hays.

There will be two events presented in connection to Future Memoria: a lecture and workshop about the PLOT community-garden project on July 27 from 2 pm to 4 pm, and an exhibition tour co-led by Edwards and Simon Fraser University professor Roxanne Panchasi on August 10 from 2 pm to 5 pm.

The July 6 summer opening reception will also commemorate the closure of ARTS 2024, the annual open-juried art exhibition held in collaboration with the Arts Council of Surrey, where the People’s Choice Award will be announced. 

Future Memoria will remain open until August 25, and admission is free. More details are available through the Surrey Art Gallery.

Post sponsored by Surrey Art Gallery.

Daniel Jolliffe’s Yes, Yes and Yes, from the Control Panels series, 2019, plastic, custom and non-functional electronics. Gift of family of Daniel Jolliffe. Photo courtesy of the artist’s estate.