We were incredibly excited to attend the opening of Coventry Biennial 2023 earlier this month and see the outcome of one Warwick researchers’ collaboration with a local artist.
Image Credits: Garry Jones
Coventry Biennial is a social, political and critical platform for contemporary art, that delivers significant festivals every two years and has welcomed a million highly engaged visitors to exhibitions, events and activities since 2017. This year’s Biennial is called ‘Like a Short Cut Through the Brambles’ and explores humankinds relationship to the world around us.
Following a call for applications from researchers at the University of Warwick, professor Graeme MacDonald was selected to collaborate with Coventry artist Paul Lemmon. The outcome is a 6 metre wide painting that combines Graeme’s research into ‘petrocultures’ (an interdisciplinary field examining the potential of a post-fossil fuel society) and Paul’s artistic exploration of coding and compression algorithms.
Entitled ‘Memories of a Future City’, the resulting painting imagines the future trajectory of sustainable developments in Coventry, including the introduction of vertical farms, automobiles without wheels, and the city being declared fossil-fuel-free in 2027.
Graeme and Paul’s artwork can be seen in the Biennial exhibition at The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum until the 14th January 2024.