Historian and curator team up for exhibition tour on utopic and dystopic futures

Surrey, BC – Surrey Art Gallery is pleased to announce a conversational tour of summer exhibition Future Memoria with curator Rhys Edwards and historian Dr. Roxanne Panchasi. The tour begins at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 10. Admission is free.

In Future Memoria, selections from the Gallery’s permanent collection, along with loaned artworks, reflect ideas of utopia, dystopia, and the future itself. With art by over forty artists on display, the exhibition presents a wide variety of responses to the question of what an ideal society looks like—or the ways in which the world falls short of our expectations. This public tour is an opportunity for visitors to delve into the exhibition in greater depth, with a focus on individual artworks that highlight key ideas related to the show’s complex and often challenging subjects.

Dr. Panchasi, an expert on the history of social revolution and theories of utopia and apocalypse, will join the exhibition’s curator Rhys Edwards for an in-depth discussion of many of the artworks on display in Future Memoria. Panchasi has also contributed to the exhibition in an essay “What do we want from the future?,” published by Surrey Art Gallery and available on the exhibition webpage. In the essay, Dr. Panchasi writes: “Our imagined futures are moving finish lines of wish fulfillment and anxiety. We invest them with hope for human civilization/s and the planet we call home. We look to them as warnings that might frighten us to do better by previewing the dystopias and catastrophes that await us if we don’t.”

With Panchasi and Edwards leading the tour in conversation, a broader range of perspectives and observations on many of the exhibition’s themes—such as spirituality, economics, ecology, justice, and beauty—will be presented. Visitors will be welcome to join in the conversation during and after the tour.

Future Memoria closes on August 25.

About Roxanne Panchasi

Roxanne Panchasi is Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University. Her teaching, research, and writing focus on modern France and empire, nuclear culture, popular film, music, and the end of the world. She is the author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France Between the Wars (Cornell University Press, 2009), and the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network.

About Surrey Art Gallery

Founded in 1975, Surrey Art Gallery presents contemporary art by local, national, and international artists, including digital and audio art. Recognized for its award-winning programs, the Gallery engages children through to adults in ongoing conversations that affect our lives and provides opportunities to interact with artists and the artistic process. The Gallery is located at 13750 88 Avenue in Surrey on the unceded territories of the Salish Peoples, including the q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), q̓ʷɑ:n̓ƛ̓ən̓ (Kwantlen), and Semiahma (Semiahmoo) nations. Surrey Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges operating funding from the City of Surrey, Province of BC through BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Surrey Art Gallery Association.