Feeding the eyes: Reuben Knutson's utopian images

Always happy to combine art and play (aren't they really the same thing?), I headed off to the opening of Reuben Knutson's interactive exhibition 'Utopian images of the past, present and future in a 1970's Welsh landscape', which shows at Aberystwyth University's School of Art until 12 September. The exhibition is the culmination of his PhD research in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television, but as a longtime inhabitant of the School of Art, he is having his work is presented there.

The exhibition is in three parts: collaged photographic images in the corridor, a twenty-five minute film in the right hand exhibition space, and in the left, a series of overhead projectors (pictured) with a flurry of acetates that the public are invited to layer on the projector bases, and thus display on the walls. At the opening everyone was too shy to 'disturb' the exhibition at first, but this is crucial to its understanding. Archive photographs, reproductions of illustrations and period documents are interspersed with quotations from Walter Benjamin. And it is here that I will have to leave description of the exhibition, until a return visit allows me to see the film in its entirety, and digest the drawers full of images. The communities and events Knutson has researched promise to be extremely engaging, and are currently entirely outside my sphere of knowledge. So stay tuned...

More info on Knutson's exhibition

Photo above: Reuben Knutson, 'Utopian images of the past, present and future in a 1970's Welsh landscape', 2014 (installation view). Photo by Indigo Violet Larkin 2014.