The Royal Standard is excited to announce the lineup of artists we have commissioned for UTOPIA - a digital project that will live on the landing page of our new website in between July and November. The page will host each artist's work for three weeks at a time, as we prepare to launch our new website.
UTOPIA invites artists to respond to the possible futures presented by our current global situation, as well as questions thrown up by the complex and contradicting nature of utopian ideals. Threads running through each of the selected commission projects include how collective thinking can activate social and economic change, the individual’s capacity to create their own utopia and looking to the past to understand or reimagine the present and future.
KIARA MOHAMED
MONDAY 6 JULY
Kiara Mohamed is a Somali, queer multidisciplinary artist based in Liverpool, working in photography, filmmaking, poetry, and artisanal handicraft. Her work is primarily concerned with addressing the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and self-care.
For UTOPIA, Kiara presents Founding Mother, a video exploring how utopia can be achieved through self-acceptance and how her actions have changed the lives of women in her family. Using archival footage and text, Kiara confronts generational trauma passed on through her family, hoping she can reverse the process through healing and the creation of a safe space for future generations.
BRENDAN CURTIS
MONDAY 27 JULY
Brendan Curtis is a Liverpool-based drag artist, writer, poet and chef. Navel gazing, fridge grazing, dissociating… He writes about and from the body, exploring queerness and the grotesque through a muck smeared lens. He is a graduate of the School of the Damned and co-produces and hosts EAT ME - a Liverpool-based drag dinner cabaret and queer disco.
Brendan’s project explores the potential aspects of queer utopia through the bodily, the relational and the environmental. His triptych of poems will take the form of an online zine, merging visual references with an audio sound track, elevating the poems from words to performance. Looking through a radical queer lens, Brendan will project a polyamorous and transcendent utopia which celebrates crossing boundaries of the human body, radical forms of love and natural species which exists outside of heterosexuality.
JOHN CARNEY
MONDAY 17 AUGUST
John Carney is a recent practice-led MRes graduate from Manchester School of Art. A multimedia artist, his work is conceptually driven and focuses on the power of objects and images, naturally leading him to study the fetishism of everyday objects.
For his project John asks us to re-imagine the world under the banner of a new flag - ‘All Power to the Imagination’. The phrase invites an open-ended paradox about utopia; does utopian thinking signify the political power of the imagination, in its ability to inspire collective dreaming, or are promised utopias tools for political control? John invites audiences to explore these questions through a live talk he will deliver followed by a facilitated discussion.
BINK BULTHAWEENAN
MONDAY 7 SEPTEMBER
Bink Bulthaweenan is a visual artist based in Manchester, who finds their voice and solace through art. Originally from Thailand, Bink’s work is based on their experience growing up in Southeast Asia, British culture, their sexuality and identity. Through their art, Bink looks to reinvent story telling with a performative and humorous approach.
Guiding the audience to a mindful, non-binary utopia, Bink will act as a navigator through our current situation. Influenced by their Buddhist upbringing and meditation, Bink will embody a representational figure who manifests, speaks and demonstrates the elements needed to reach a utopian, dreamlike state of mind. Working in collaboration with Molly Ellison, who will create visual graphics and effects using creative coding for the piece, Bink will use a mixture of new and archival footage, text and sound to realise their artwork.
ROWLAND HILL
MONDAY 28 SEPTEMBER
Rowland Hill is a Manchester-based artist whose practice is concerned with how language and power operate on and through the body. Her performances often draw on prescribed systems of expression including choreographic regimes, musical tropes and formats for public speech to produce open-ended, speculative alternatives.
Rowland’s long-term project Interesting Times looks to cultural artefacts of 1990s Eurodance for answers to Britain's current relationship with the European Union. Emerging during the end of the Cold War in a moment of pop-cultural optimism, Eurodance ambivalently evokes states of both euphoria and emergency. Hill's project opens up potential spaces for togetherness in an ironic and illuminating reading of post-Brexit Britain.
Rowland will produce a live visual presentation for an online audience which delves into the history of Eurodance, exploring the intersection between politics and pop-music, followed by an open discussion and a playlist to take home.
PAT FLYNN
MONDAY 19 OCTOBER
Pat Flynn explores how we understand ourselves through mass culture and commodities; creating narratives about our human need to believe, how we fetishise belief and how this affects our morality. Working in photography and film, Pat is originally from Leigh. He lives and works in Manchester as a visual artist.
Inspired by the 1980’s arcade game Moon Portal, Pat will create a film guiding the viewer through a seemingly endless loop of abstract landscapes. Adopting the initial aesthetic points and rolling landscape of the game, the film will transport the viewer through five of the most popular utopian landscapes. Taking into account the human necessity to dream, the end goal is simple; to escape.
In support of Black Lives Matter, we have commissioned a further two artworks as part of our UTOPIA series; one to champion and platform a Black artist, and one to highlight the important work being done by community mental health group, Mary Seacole House, who are run by and for Liverpool's Black community. We invited both to respond to our commission brief as they saw fit.
SYMONÉ
MONDAY 9 NOVEMBER
Symoné is a multidisciplinary performer. She is currently developing an ongoing project, UTOPIAN (t&c’s apply), a live performance piece that responds to the abuse of power roles in cults and underground party culture. Conflicting with their guise of utopia, Symoné relieves the darker side, exploring brainwashing and the abuse of power that can happen in these environments.
For Utopia, Symoné has provided a glimpse of UTOPIAN (t&c's apply) in a movement video piece called, OASIS. Symoné envisions an environment with a sense of collective euphoria and togetherness.
Symoné initially applied to work with us on UTOPIA but due to living outside the North West, was not eligible for the commission, despite the incredible strength of her application and personal connection to the project. In light of this, we wanted to commission Symoné to help her develop her live art production and link it to our commission series with her ongoing project.
MARY SEACOLE HOUSE
MONDAY 9 NOVEMBER
Mary Seacole House is a charity based in Toxteth, set up to provide support services primarily to people of colour and refugees with mental health issues.
Some of their members, volunteers, and staff have responded to the themes of UTOPIA by exploring their thoughts on the current social climate through photography, collage, and writing. Service users have taken part in various activities to create a collection of postcards that document their experience of 2020, envisioned to be sent out to a future generation.
Mary Seacole House facilitates a weekly art session that engages members in a range of creative activities in a social and supportive setting. The sessions have temporarily stopped due to COVID-19, however a range of creative resources and activities have been made accessible for members to engage in from home. We are planning towards working with Mary Seacole house in the new year, helping their service users work towards producing an exhibition together and facilitating workshops in our gallery when it is safe to do so.
