Entrée Optimism

City Arcadia – launch – Coventry – 31/7/2015

The City Arcadia project has officially announced the first 10 artistic propositions that will become the future,  soon to be appearing across Coventry throughout 2015 and beyond.

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Artists from across the UK have engaged with the City Arcadia project including creators from Coventry, Manchester, London and Kent.

Birmingham artist, Ryan Hughes, kicked-off the event with his Marking the Internet and the Physical. With an unseasonably generous amount of sunlight, the shopping arcade was transformed into a cathedral of light, highlighting the new ruins already sentenced to demolition, currently remade into a meeting/exhibition/dining/exhibition space in its last throes. Ryan’s work featured several (I counted ten…) red translucent perspex geo-coding pointers, similar to plectrums or pizza slices that gracefully orbitted above visitors, warping beams of sunlight and casting red teardrop shadows on the arcade walkway.

City Arcadia Co-curators and Directors, Laura Elliot and Michael Mayhew introduced the launch with a nod towards future opportunities for people to find out more about the forwards/backwards, modernity/progression ethos behind the project. With funding and support from Coventry City Council and Arts Council England, City Arcadia has sparked renewewed external interest  about local arts partners in a scene that was already quietly flourishing, albeit unseen by many outside the city.

The propsitions range from post-zombie-pocalypse-fallout, ripping sound from two-toned ringroad vibrations, lanlocked surfaces reimagined as a fantasy beach, a traditional card-game divining the future and many workshops, performances, and talks.

Find out more about the 10 propositions – coming soon:

At the very least, a city should gift its citizens freedom, threaten them with new possibilities – this is an ongoing tussle in the appropriation and control of public space by local authorities, dividing opinions over construction and planning atrocities carried-out in the name of The People – witness the bland, pedestrianised human highways of fixed furniture and too-green grasses approaching Coventry train station.

City Arcadia is a unique opportunity to exploit Coventry’s existing spaces and striking post-war architecture to snare fresh audiences into art made strikingly accessible and exciting, in a way that static presentations can sometimes remain uninviting – a direct challenge; an intervention, is needed – indeed a few people in transit wandered through the event and took more than a passing glance, on the cusp of asking questions and getting involved  – small steps are required towards greatness.

The most exciting notion of the propositions offered and yet to be fulfilled is the raw potentiality of an initial concept and its becoming; what it will/won’t deliver – and everything that might still change during its creation – City Arcadia is a journey into an unknown optimism for the arts in Coventry.

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For enquiries email: curators@coventry-artspace.co.uk