Is This Tomorrow?


Confused exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery which invited architects and artists to respond to issues we face today.

I found the show a bit hit and miss. I liked the idea it was reimagining a similar show at the gallery in 1956 and it might have been interesting to see some archive material from that as a comparison. I didn’t understand some of the installations as their descriptions were just so convoluted that I gave up trying to work through the text. I did however like the idea that the works were ‘numbered’ by symbols rather than numbers of letters. Because each installation looked at a different topic that whole thing felt disjointed however some of them did spark ideas.

I loved the fact as you entered the show you were invited to walk through a sheep management system decorated with animal related objects such as dog toys and a hamster tunnel. I’m still not too sure what it meant but it was fun! It was also nice to see a work by Sir David Adjaye, the architect who has just had a show at the Design Museum. I’d enjoyed that so it was nice to see this pavilion made of glass which filtered out certain wavelengths to create different colours.

I thought Farshid Moussavi and Zineb Sedira’s installation looking at the free movement of people and goods was clever as it consisted of nine turnstiles closely packed together to create a maze As you moved through it you activated sounds including alarms and bird song. Rachel Armstrong and Cecile B Evan’s work in which an animated blue bird dying and rising again over and over again in a curtain of vapour was mesmeric.

My favourite piece was David Kohn and Simon Fujiwara’s “Salvator Mundi Experience”, a model building composed of sampled architecture which you ducked into to find various small models of exhibition spaces showing the Leonardo Salvator Mundi which is so much in the news at the moment. It spoke to me of how certain works of art can become bigger that their reality and at how the perception of work can vary depending on how we view it. Also it was very beautiful and what’s wrong with that?

Closes on 12 May 2019

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