Underpinned by the Movements of Freighters

Sophie Goodchild, Gabriel Birch, Sabeen Chaudry, Jane Davies, Nina Davies, Cole Denyer, Bryan Dooley, Ashleigh Fisk, Susan Jacobs, Alix Marie, Kemi Onabule, Richard Phoenix, Stephany Pollard, Luke Samuel, Sherie Sitauze, Huhtamaki Wab, Salome Wu, Ajla Zihan Yi, Scott Young

Curated by Joe Moss

1st - 16th July 2021,

The Florence Trust,

St Saviour’s Church,

Aberdeen Park,

London, N5 2AR

Launching on July 1st, Underpinned by the Movements of Freighters seeks to tease out the strange links between mythology and industry.

The exhibition, including the work of twelve artists, is situated in The Florence Trust, a grade-1 listed Neo-gothic church turned artist studios. Alongside this exhibition, a limited-edition zine will be released, which explores some of the specific, real-world impacts of the relationship between mythologies and industry.

Mythologies have a great deal of power, serving different agendas over time. The nuclear family is one of these mythologies. If we trace the lineage of this myth, we find its origins in England, an approval by the Church, and a key role in the Industrial Revolution. After this it is exported as the fundamental Modern social unit, considered to have a high moral character. It is in this moral understanding that we can almost grasp another, deeper mythology. It is the fundamental myth of the West that to become ‘Modern’ is to go through the process of industrialisation.

Underpinned by the Movements of Freighters aims to unpick any binary understanding of mythologies, and instead show how their trajectories intersect with industrial developments. The exhibition presents a cosmic soup of mythological and industrial influences, where you will find slippery truth in references to the darker side of folklore, the alchemical beginning of the scientific method, unused patents, and verdant utopias.

By situating the exhibition and zine launch in the Romantic architecture of The Florence Trust, whilst the reverence of nature and the ephemeral seep back into contemporary culture, Underpinned by the Movements of Freighters pays a wary homage to Romanticism whilst critically updating and contextualising the overlap for the contemporary world.