
Installation shot of 'The High Life' © Lydia Blakeley. Image courtesy of the artist.
The exhibition, which includes Blakeley’s paintings, painted sculptural sun loungers and cool box planters containing cacti and crystals, was inspired by the 1995 Microsoft advertising campaign, ‘Where do you want to go today?’
Described by The New York Times as “a winsome, humanistic approach to demystifying technology”, the tag-line for this campaign formed the starting point for Blakeley’s current exhibition in which the artist explores how virtual realms offered us opportunity to escape the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Against the clinical, white gallery walls, the artist’s installations forge an artificial recreation of scenes from vacation advertisements and travel sites, inviting visitors enclosed within the confines of the gallery – survivors of quarantine – to imagine an opulent and artificial dimension. Distant, unattainable, and free.
Until 4 September, 2022
Southwark Park Galleries, 1 Park Approach, Southwark Park, London SE16 2UA