Kinda Blu
You are viewing an archived exhibition. This exhibition has already taken place.
Richard Deacon, Kind of Blue, 2001. Image credit: Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London.
Drawn from the Arts Council Collection and curated by artist Simeon Barclay, Kinda Blu explores Coventry’s rich contradictions, reflecting on his early encounters with the city through television and popular culture.
As a child, television (or the “box of delights”) provided Barclay with a surrogate education and acted as a looking glass for the peculiarities of society; from the jubilant blue tide of Coventry City’s 1987 FA Cup triumph to the haunting presence of the Two-Tone band The Specials’ song Ghost Town, that captured Britain’s social unrest in the early 1980s.
Coventry, despite the spectre of trauma, has in Barclay’s words “resisted the warm bosom of nostalgia, instead drawing energy from industry, migration, myth, reconciliation and architectural innovation”. This restless spirit is echoed in the Arts Council Collection, a dynamic repository of modern and contemporary British art that remains ever relevant.
Barclay has selected works that capture humour, satire, the surreal and absurd, as well as inventive plays with language, that explore working-class life, representation, and the contested nature of Englishness and place. Kinda Blu is both a personal reflection and a broader meditation on how a city’s stories resonate nationally.
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This project has been co-commissioned by Arts Council Collection and Coventry Biennial.
You are viewing an archived exhibition. This exhibition has already taken place.