Exhibitions
How We Live Now: New Online Projects
Foreground are delighted to announce the launch of our new online programming strand How We Live Now.
2020 has seen huge changes in our society. The global Covid-19 pandemic has affected the way society functions more significantly than any other event outside of wartime, changing the way we live, work, connect and interact with each other in radical ways.
Governmental responses to the pandemic, and the intense public awareness of current affairs that has emerged within this crisis, have exposed deep divisions and injustices in society, bringing issues of social inequality, poverty, systemic racism, political fundamentalism, and the exploitation of the natural world into sharper focus than ever.
As an arts organisation dedicated to creating new art for new audiences within the physical and social structures of communities, Foreground’s programme has always been inspired by people and place. How We Live Now is an extension of this fundamental passion, expressed in a new programme of online projects that provides new commissioning opportunities for artists to respond to and explore how community is formed and expressed within our increasingly divided society.
This winter will see us launch How We Live Now in November with a newly commissioned photography project from acclaimed American-born, Somerset-based, photographer Aaron Schuman. Launched on the eve of the American presidential election, SLANT (Election, Fall 2020) is a new edit of Schuman’s celebrated series that uses police reports and photographs from Amherst, Massachusetts, to reflect on the disquieting rise of division and intolerance within the climate of post-truth politics in contemporary America.
This will be followed in December by the premiere of a new body of work by award-winning emerging London-based, Irish-Nigerian photographer Cian Oba Smith. A Quiet Prayer is Oba Smith’s meditation on London in lockdown, and a sensitive portrait of how the pandemic has affected people who are often overlooked and places that are too frequently misrepresented.
How We Live Now is an expansion of our commitment to commissioning artists and working with the public to create new artworks in changing times, not a replacement for it. Over the winter we will continue to work on Primary/Bristol, our pioneering programme of permanent commissions with Bristol primary schools, and share the results of more of these commissions with our audiences.
As an organisation that works in public space and within our civic life, Foreground has also been working hard developing ways we can continue to create new art with and for the public in our new social context.
In 2021 we will launch a series of new physical commissions that bring artists and the public back together to create new work within the restrictions public health measures currently impose upon our ability to gather socially.
How We Live Now has been made possible with funding from Arts Council England’s Emergency Response Fund.
Governmental responses to the pandemic, and the intense public awareness of current affairs that has emerged within this crisis, have exposed deep divisions and injustices in society, bringing issues of social inequality, poverty, systemic racism, political fundamentalism, and the exploitation of the natural world into sharper focus than ever.
As an arts organisation dedicated to creating new art for new audiences within the physical and social structures of communities, Foreground’s programme has always been inspired by people and place. How We Live Now is an extension of this fundamental passion, expressed in a new programme of online projects that provides new commissioning opportunities for artists to respond to and explore how community is formed and expressed within our increasingly divided society.
This winter will see us launch How We Live Now in November with a newly commissioned photography project from acclaimed American-born, Somerset-based, photographer Aaron Schuman. Launched on the eve of the American presidential election, SLANT (Election, Fall 2020) is a new edit of Schuman’s celebrated series that uses police reports and photographs from Amherst, Massachusetts, to reflect on the disquieting rise of division and intolerance within the climate of post-truth politics in contemporary America.
This will be followed in December by the premiere of a new body of work by award-winning emerging London-based, Irish-Nigerian photographer Cian Oba Smith. A Quiet Prayer is Oba Smith’s meditation on London in lockdown, and a sensitive portrait of how the pandemic has affected people who are often overlooked and places that are too frequently misrepresented.
How We Live Now is an expansion of our commitment to commissioning artists and working with the public to create new artworks in changing times, not a replacement for it. Over the winter we will continue to work on Primary/Bristol, our pioneering programme of permanent commissions with Bristol primary schools, and share the results of more of these commissions with our audiences.
As an organisation that works in public space and within our civic life, Foreground has also been working hard developing ways we can continue to create new art with and for the public in our new social context.
In 2021 we will launch a series of new physical commissions that bring artists and the public back together to create new work within the restrictions public health measures currently impose upon our ability to gather socially.
How We Live Now has been made possible with funding from Arts Council England’s Emergency Response Fund.
