Kid30 and friends bring you an immersive, bleak and humourous take on the future in this pop-up exhibition showing this weekend only in Nottingham City Centre...
Anyone who knows even a bit about street art in Nottingham should be aware of the work of Kid30. This exhibition is led by him but features a range of other collaborators and show’s his range goes way beyond just painting murals on walls. It’s a fully immersive sensory experience that showcases various work, showing skills in audio production, sculpture, modelling, audio production and quite a lot more.
The building is one you are likely to have walked past many times, just down the road from Broadway Cinema and next to the Lord Roberts pub. It’s a building run by local regeneration expert Rob Howie-Smith and features a range of quite swanky art studios upstairs. However, there’s clearly still quite a lot of work to be done with the downstairs area and the exhibition leans into this and makes it the central feature.
The exhibition is billed as ‘A museum of found objects from the after years 2035-2055” and it’s fair to say it doesn’t paint a very positive portrait. The overriding theme is that of a bleak and dystopian future. Part Mad Max, part Brasseye and part Black Mirror, the after years clearly are a place where the sun is too hot, people fight for food and someone somewhere is milking the pigeons. It’s all done with a great amount of both thought, anxiety and humour.
Throughout your journey through the various rooms and caverns you will come across hundreds of objects, see lots of tongue in cheek flyposters and also hear a consistent radio soundtrack throughout. Inspired by pirate radio there’s even an abandoned radio studio as part of the exhibit with an audio soundtrack from Relic Radio that leans between local radio cheese and eerie horror film scores. Apparently you can even tune into it on the FM frequency if you live nearby.
Some of the consistent themes throughout are teeth (or the loss of them), pigeon milk, useless technology and rats. There’s also some great parody and commentary on some of the big global companies like Apple (crack phone), Netflix (Net Fix), Amazon (Grime), Coca Cola (Sola Cola), Tik Tok (Tik Tik), Heinz (Grindz), Trip Advisor (Trap Advisor), Magnum (Gagnum) and even a welcome resurgence of the 1990s budget brand Happy Shopper (Crappy Shopper). The thought of how much those brands are part of most of our lives, whether we like it or not, and what would happen if they turned on us is one worth thought. Could it happen?
Collaborators in the exhibition include Detail, Ging, Boaster, Grim Finga, Dizzy Ink, Lambhorse and 2 Foot. Special mention must go to the Kid30 canvas works, which are a spot of beauty among the bleakness. Also the model village in a tent from Roadman Rails, where all the houses are on fire and a police car endlessly chases around a white van. Hilarious!
Relic runs from Saturday 13 to Sunday 21 September at 28 Broad Street. Entry is free. But by stuff some from the gift shop and support the artists.
Kid30 website
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
