Mapping the City
SOMERSET HOUSE, LONDON
19.5.2014 - 26.5.2014
Mapping the City took place for one month between January 22 and Feb 15 2015 in the New Wing at Somerset House. 50 artists were commissioned to produce maps of their own cities / spaces, subjective depictions of how they understood the city. These artists included Shepard Fairey, Swoon, and Ron English as well as Russell Maurice, Will Sweeney, James Jarvis and Boris Tellegen.
Mapping the City was visited by nearly 14,000 people in just under a month. It was also featured heavily in both national and international press (see Press section below). All of the free, public events linked to Mapping the City were full to capacity.
Mapping the City was curated by Rafael Schacter and produced by A(by)P in conjunction with Somerset House.
With thanks to our partners Savvy, Pablo Limon Studio, Lord & Du Plooy, UCL Department of Anthropology, UCL Urban Lab, Makerversity, and NTS Radio.
Mapping the City Programming activities included:
Mapping Through Talks with artists Eltono and Filippo Minelli
Mapping Through Performance with The Cult of Rammellzee
Mapping Through Film; An Evening with Marc Isaacs
Mapping Through Music with NTS Radio
Mapping Through Discourse with Professor Muki Haklay, Dr James Chesire and Dr Hugo Spiers
Mapping through Making; a family mapping activity
Main Exhibition Text
‘If you look at your city from a different angle, you start loving it in a new way.
You realise that the city is not only about the obvious.
Its about the things out of our regular focus,
usually somewhere on top or in a corner,
somewhere hiding in plain sight’.
HONET 2012
Graffiti and street artists have an intimate relationship with the city.
Through producing their work on this living canvas, inhabiting the streets and evading authorities, they come to understand and engage with the urban landscape in unique ways – through subjective surveying rather than objective ordinance..
Mapping the City unlocks this insightful perspective, providing an ‘insider’ view of the city and disclosing the secrets every landscape contains. Challenging normative conceptions of the urban space, the exhibition stimulates the geographic awareness of each viewer through presenting a series of cartographic representations by 50 selected artists of their chosen cities.
Ranging from literal to highly metaphoric depictions, from the figurative to the abstract, each map is an individual response to the way these artists experience and interpret the places that they know so well.
Installation Images
Work Details
The Cult of Rammellzee Performance
RIDING THE SEVEN SEVENS INTO SODOMS PIT - TRACING THE FINAL OUTLINE - AN AUTONOMOUS SEALING RITUAL
Filippo Minelli Map Performance
Mapping the City Press
