Exhibition: Josh Gurner, Through the Concrete, and Andy Holden, Manifesto Paintings
MK Gallery Project Space
Through the Concrete is a new work by local videographer and musician, Josh Gurner, in collaboration with members of Milton Keynes Youth Faculty. The video draws on the teenagers’ autobiographies and artworks by artists Andy Holden and Boyd and Evans. It reflects on and connects to youth culture in the development of the new town.
The exhibition also includes paintings and a film from Holden’s Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity, 1999–2003: Towards a Unified Theory of MI!MS (2013). From 10 January, a new installation by Holden will be presented at Middleton Hall as part of the inaugural MK50 celebrations. This includes photographs of young couples kissing against public sculptures. Reflecting on his own youth in Milton Keynes, Holden states: “Milton Keynes was undoubtedly exotic. And seemed to be growing up in synch with me growing up. The Point was a multiplex-beacon, and the place we’d go to see Blockbusters. These fed America into my imagination, and Milton Keynes seemed a bit more like America after each subsequent film.”
MK Gallery previously partnered with the Youth Faculty to produce We Are The Point in the iconic building which, having housed a youth centre, is now set for demolition. The loss of the space coincided with the closure of The Buszy, the former bus station used as a youth centre, commemorated in a song and video by Gurner’s metal/rap band, Hacktivist.
This exhibition puts forward the proposition that City Club will provide a place for young people to exercise their Right to the (New) City, the title of the MK Gallery symposium held at The Buszy in the summer of 2016.
