When the architect Hubert de Cronin Hastings published his anti-Modernist polemic ‘Civilia’ in the 1970s, it was difficult to know whether the author was making a serious, cautionary point about town planning or merely making a playful observation, tongue firmly in cheek. His book proposed a Utopian vision for the British town of Nuneaton, the idea being to create a vibrant inner city townscape to stop the ever-encroaching suburbs destroying the British countryside.
His tract forms the inspiration for Toby Paterson’s latest collection of works, ‘Vague Space’, currently on show at London’s Sutton Lane gallery. Proposed buildings and destroyed buildings make for an overall conglomeration of modernist structures that hang in an imagined landscape or vague space, hence the exhibition’s title.
On the inspiration behind the collection, Paterson explains, ‘it’s the idea of a notional landscape, a landscape that must stand as an identity when there’s so little tangible form left to derive an identity from; nothing to hold onto amidst the shifting topography - space briefly yet intimately known soon vanishes and can only be held loosely and unsatisfactorily as an idea.’
Click here to view gallery.
INFORMATION
'Vague Space', 7 July to 10 August
- Website
- http://www.suttonlane.com
- Telephone
- 44.20 7253 8580
- Address
- Sutton Lane Gallery
1 Sutton Lane
London EC1M 5PU
