Paradise and disaster collide in new Surrey Art Gallery exhibition Future Memoria, opening June 22 — Stir

The exhibition traces the spectrum of futurity in all its tempting humours and horrors. Visitors will encounter lush fantasies of aesthetic splendour and abundance, as in the animations of Alex McLeod and Laura Lamb, as well as the spectres of nuclear apocalypse depicted by textile artist Barbara Todd and printmaker Doug Biden. Elsewhere, Daniel Jolliffe, Myfanwy MacLeod, and Vikky Alexander capture idealistic self-help programs, artificial landscapes, and the dominance of computational thinking and technological solutions.

Sculptures, photographs, and drawings by Keith Langergraber, Heather Kai Smith, Sylvia Grace Borda, and Tsēmā Igharas focus on the challenges of utopian thinking in practice. Their artworks explore the promise of a better life while considering the agony of social, economic, and ecological catastrophes.