Playlist: Utopia Deferred

Utopia or dystopia? Paradise or hell? To mark Corke Gallery’s new Utopia Deferred painting exhibition, harbinger of doom C. James Fagan creates a mixtape for a new type of world…

Painters Paul Collinson, Mandy Payne and Conor Rogers are currently displaying their dystopic work in a new group exhibition called Utopia Deferred, at Corke Gallery, Liverpool (you can read more about it here). The touring show from the three artists – all of whom have been selected for various editions of the John Moores Painting Prize – takes its title from a 1972 Baudrillard essay of the same name; exploring different aspects of the contemporary landscape, and challenging our ideas of the perfect world. It is, says C. James Fagan, a recognisable realm of housing estates, spaces left to seed, and the remains of a delayed, possibility forgotten utopia…

Images: Utopia Deferred exhibition: Mandy Payne, Looking Forward Looking Back (main); Conor Rogers, I’ve Got Nowt (top)