In these days of gentrification, when struggling artists can barely afford to live in in the city, an exhibition opening this week at the Tin Sheds Gallery at Sydney University sounds like a war cry to take back the city.
For The Right to the City exhibition artists were asked submit plans for remaking the city – in real or imagined ways. The result is a collection of works that redefine city living by engaging with issues around urban space, such as property ownership and gentrification. The artworks are ‘escape plans’ to leave this city of overpriced rents, restrictive rules and regulations, and burgeoning designer homeware stores. One escape route is depicted by Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrc’s transformation of a housing estate in Amsterdam. Her project of creating a community garden and communal kitchen brought together neighbours who previously hadn’t spoken to each other.
Another artwork that exists beyond the gallery walls is Joni Taylor’s DIY Urbanism project. This brings together micro urban interventions by artists who have done something to change their local area, such as spray painting bike paths or creating a soup kitchen.
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro have depicted their frustration at the gentrification of the inner city by creating a catapult that flings takeaway coffee cups against a wall. They also contributed their personal story of rising rents forcing them to leave the inner city in a publication that is accompanying the exhibition.
Tin Sheds director Zanny Begg curated the exhibition with Lee Stickells, a lecturer in architecture at Sydney University. Zanny says the idea of a fantasy or escape is tied into Utopian ideas of what the city can be like.
“Utopias are useful as something to hang your hopes on, to maintain this idea that things could be different and to find the little cracks and gaps where you reach towards them being different,” Zanny told the City Hub.
“Artworks that interest me don’t just begin and end in a gallery space. They are works that seeks some sort of societal change.”
One such piece is by SquatSpace – the collective responsible for the 2000 Broadway squats. They have created a series of fake real estate ads, unrealestates, for iconic but empty and unused Sydney buildings to draw attention to the ludicrous nature of the real estate industry.
The Right to the City exhibition runs from April 7 until April 30. A symposium will take place on Sunday April 10 from 11am to 5pm. Tin Sheds Gallery, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Planning, City Road, University of Sydney. The symposium program is at www.therighttothecity.com/exhibition
