UTOPIA 2016: A Year of Imagination and Possibility

January 25th saw the opening of UTOPIA 2016 at Somerset House; a year of exhibitions, workshops, talks and performances to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Sir Thomas More’s influential book ‘Utopia’. Throughout the year Somerset House will hold a series of events bringing together the realms of art, literature, society, fashion, design, architecture and theatre, in honour of More’s work of fiction and political philosophy. 

Written in 1516, Utopia was More’s envision a self-contained island world where society and its systems were equal. The Greek word ‘Utopia’ meaning both ‘nowhere’ and ‘good place'.

Sir Thomas More 1478 - 1535

Jonathan Reekie, Direcetor of Somerset House, has expressed that he feels More’s text does not present a single vision of a 'Utopia', but instead “an invitation to dream, to think... to imagine a better world”.

UTOPIA 2016 Flag created by Jeremy Deller & Fraser Muggeridge flying above Somerset House

UTOPIA by Jeremy Deller & Fraser Muggeridge, inspired by Thomas More’s Utopian Alphabet, printed in the first edition of Utopia

Exhibitions include Venturing Beyond: Graffiti and the Everyday Utopias of the Street, exploring the “intrinsically utopian” art of graffiti, showcasing specially commissioned works by 18 street artists from around the world. Totality: A new commission by the Arts Council Collection by Katie Peterson: a mirror ball comprising images of nearly every solar eclipse that has ever been documented by humankind. And In Our Hands: An Experimental Installation demonstrated by Le Gun Collective Illustrators and Professor Richard Howells: a collection of intercultural Utopian expressions drawn from Navajo designs to Roger Fry and Slavoj Žižek.

 

UTOPIA 2016 is a collaboration between Somerset House, King’s College London and the Courtauld Institute, in partnership with the British Library, the AHRC, Guardian Live, London School of Economics and Political Science, Verso, the British Council and engages many of the 300 plus creative organisations, artists and makers resident at Somerset House.