Jan 12 to Feb 25

Virginia Nimarkoh

Urban Utopias

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«Urban Utopias» is an ongoing series of photographs documenting municipal green spaces like parks, community gardens and city farms in southeast London.These sites are the meeting point for diverse narratives around community, nature, ownership and the city.
The project presents these spaces as utopian. The utopia proposed is a contested one that might involve sites that are in a constant state of negotiation and renegotiation. The green spaces in the part of London that the project focuses on contradicts its public perception as an urban jungle. Indeed, there is an almost palpable need for this green space in the urban context.«Urban Utopias» centres on areas like Camberwell, Vauxhall, Peckham and Brixton. Here, historical luminaries like William Blake and John Ruskin frequented some of the green spaces that now are part of contemporary urban London. Arguably, these areas are now considered amongst the less salubrious parts of the city: their names have become negative signifiers of class or race. The project considers whether the places to which they refer can transcend such connotations.
«Urban Utopias» is evidence of a multicultural and horticultural ideal; it celebrates the community efforts that sustain these sites. The project seeks out beauty in the some of the most modest, unpromising of locations, and more often than not, finds it there.
The work sets about questioning what we understand by terms such as beauty, nature or even the city. At a time when we are thinking increasingly about our relation to the land, the project proposes the city as a site of environmental promise.
The project is thus about being optimistic about what we have available to us environmentally. Within this context, the work embraces a politics of ecology, self-sufficiency, community, beauty, and, free ­public space.

Lecture
Artist Virginia Nimarkoh will be speaking about her recent photographic and research projects, which address the politics of landscape in a range of contexts.
She will speak about her practice; specifically her photographic project «Urban Utopias», which centres on ­municipal green spaces like parks, ­community gardens and city farms in southeast ­London. Her most recent photographic project, «Cooperative» explores the communal garden of a long-standing housing cooperative in Brixton, London. Both projects consider how the politics of landscape—relating to ownership, access and cultivation—operate on a microcosmic level.

Virginia Nimarkoh is an artist based in London. Her practice incorporates, photography, writing and curating. She studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London, where she completed a PhD in Fine Art Theory & Practice in 2006. Her work has shown widely at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, Threadwaxing Space, New York and ICA London.