30th July 2019, Art Science Museum
Floating Utopias is a playful and imaginative exhibition that explores the social history of inflatable objects such as balloons, showing how they have been used in art, architecture, and social activism over the decades.
Utopia states an imagined place or state of things that everything is perfect.
Ever since the first hot-air balloon floated into the sky in the 18th century, inflatable objects have sparked the public’s imagination, generating utopian dreams of castles in the air, floating laboratories, and cloud cities. Floating Utopias shows the impact inflatables continue to have our collective imagination. The exhibition includes historical and contemporary works, featuring over 40 artworks by international and local artists, as well as hands-on workshops and intrusions in urban space.
The highlighted works of this exhibition are Somehow I Don’t Feel Comfortable by Momoyo Torimitsu in 2000. Momoyo is a Japanese artist based in New York. She works with sculpture, installation, and performance, and her works critique media stereotypes of cuteness and happiness, using both irony and humour.
In this gallery of two giant pink rabbits facing each other in a confined space,
This oversized bunny I created that looks down on you doesn’t seem cute. It’s kind of disturbing.
Momoyo Torimitsu
the rabbits act as a social critique of the constricted modern living style in many large cities in Asia. In Japan, small apartments are often called ‘rabbit hutches,’ a disparaging reference to their small size.
The next highlighted work is also a bunny. Unlike the work of Momoyo Torimitsu, this rabbit sculpture is designed to be large and to put outdoors in the cityscape of Singapore.
This inflatable art WALTER was created by a Singaporean artist Dawn Ng.
WALTER, let others to discover the extraordinary in their every day by looking at their surroundings as if they’re children again.
Dawn Ng
The third highlight work is called Aerocene Explorer by Tomas Saraceno. This project is to create awareness about the state of the Earth’s atmosphere, and the need to evolve beyond using fossil fuels for air travel.
Aerocene Explorer is a backpack containing solar balloon and technological devices. The accompanying kits allow the user to launch the solar-powered balloon, and is designed to be activated by local communities to collect atmospheric and meteorologic data.
Tomas Saraceno is an Argentinian artist who originally trained initially as an architect. His works are created by the insights of engineering, physics, aeronautics and materials science.
The fourth highlight is a documentary of Graham Stevens’s poetic inflatable projects from the 1960s and 1970s, Atmosfields. His inflatable works focus on capturing and transforming natural energy sources from the environment. These artworks may be floating, flying or moving by the forces of nature, such as wind, water, and the sun.
Stevens was an assistant to legendary utopian architect, Buckminster Fuller in Paris in 1964, before collaborating with the French architectural group, Utopie in 1968. He was initially trained in architect.
The final highlight artworks if called Museum of the Moon by Luke Jerram in 2019. This floating sculpture of the moon is create using ultra-high resolution images captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Spanning seven meters in diameter and scale of 1:600,000. Installed to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing by NASA astronauts in 1969, this Museum of the moon is designed to travel the world, exploring the diverse cultural, scientific and religious relationships that different societies have with the Moon. And yet somehow, despite these differences, the Moon connects us all.
This artwork has been created in partnership with the UK Space Agency, University of Bristol, and the Association of Science and Discovery Center.
References:
Aerocene. (n.d.). Aerocene Rising in Munich. Retrieved from https://aerocene.org/
Torimitsu, M. (2007). Somehow I Don’t Feel Comfortable: Momoyo Torimitsu. Retrieved from https://www.momoyotorimitsu.com/somehow
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