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The Golden Space City of God. A video work developed at the International Residency Program at ArtPace San Antonio Texas and Matts Gallery London. The project received funding from ArtPace Residency Program, The Arts Council of Great Britain, The Art and Humanities Research Council, the Elephant Trust, The Henry Moore and Esmee Fairbairn Foundations. The Golden Space City of God investigates the cultural artifact as a carrier and shaper of group and social belief. The research developed a creative context to allow collaborations between artist, composer, choir, choir leader, director and sound designer, to be the central generative dynamic.

The overarching research focus is on the transformative histories and agendas of contemporary art practice and how these may be imagined now the wider transformative social cultural and political movements which underpinned modernist art practices have eroded since the collapse of the command economies in the1990’s.

In constructing a contemporary expression of subjective supernatural belief

using the languages of progressive practice and contrasting utopian drives

against specific group expressions Golden Space City draws on the concept

of the ‘Heterotopia’ - a specific, sacral alternative space for discrete groups: a

Utopian Exercise, but not for eveyone - as originally conceived by Foucault

The project is also informed by the writings on the relationship between

agendas of modernity and apocalyptic and mystical expression as mapped by

John Gray in his writings, most notably ‘Black Mass’ and the work of

Norman Cohn ‘The Pursuit of the Millennium.’

The project's starting point is the investigation of contemporary western heterodox eschatological beliefs: and in particular their expression in the electronic social spaces of the world-wide-web. Texts describing the end of the world associated with heterodox Christian group 'The Family' were developed into a libretto. This was the basis of an oratorio for voices written by composer Leo Chadburn. Performed for camera by a 28 member choir assembled for the project in Texas, this became the centre of a video installation using moving image, text and sculptural elements. The research was developed at the International residency program at ArtPace San Antonio in 2009 and received funding from ArtPace Residency Program, Arts Council of Great Britain, AHRC, Elephant Trust and Henry Moore Foundation. Exhibited 2009 at: ArtPace San Antonio; Matts Gallery London (solo, publication); Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts Manuka, New Zealand, (solo); Richard Grayson: De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, retrospective curated Jane Won, 2010(Publication).