Collaborative Art at Coventry Biennial 2023

We were incredibly excited to attend the opening of Coventry Biennial 2023 earlier this month and see the outcome of one Warwick researchers’ collaboration with a local artist.

Image Credits: Garry Jones

Coventry Biennial is a social, political and critical platform for contemporary art, that delivers significant festivals every two years and has welcomed a million highly engaged visitors to exhibitions, events and activities since 2017. This year’s Biennial is called ‘Like a Short Cut Through the Brambles’ and explores humankinds relationship to the world around us.

Following a call for applications from researchers at the University of Warwick, professor Graeme MacDonald was selected to collaborate with Coventry artist Paul Lemmon. The outcome is a 6 metre wide painting that combines Graeme’s research into ‘petrocultures’ (an interdisciplinary field examining the potential of a post-fossil fuel society) and Paul’s artistic exploration of coding and compression algorithms.

Entitled ‘Memories of a Future City’, the resulting painting imagines the future trajectory of sustainable developments in Coventry, including the introduction of vertical farms, automobiles without wheels, and the city being declared fossil-fuel-free in 2027.

Graeme and Paul’s artwork can be seen in the Biennial exhibition at The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum until the 14th January 2024.