KIERAN BUTLER
’80 YEARS FROM NOW’
13 JANUARY - 4 FEBRUARY, 2022
Kieran Butler, I will love you unconditionally, you’re my priority, digital image detail, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.
SOLARPUNK FUTURES
What does our future look like 80 years from now? This is the question that artist Kieran Butler asks.
When entering the exhibition 80 years from now, you converge upon a liminal space that appears fragmented and chaotic. Tiny threads that intersect to reveal the complicated narrative of where we are now and what is to come. Looking through the lens of science fiction, the work disrupts and recreates an altered reality filled with encoded queer aesthetics interconnected themes of community, culture, and place. Offering up a departure from the ordinary and slipping into the joyful unknown of possibilities.
Kieran Butler, 80 years from now, installation view, 2022. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Within the exhibition, nothing is what it seems; are we looking into our past or a mirage of our future? The artist has created self-referential elements of their present, infused with the idealisation of what they envision the future to be. On our current trajectory, island nations will disappear within the next ten years because of the devastating effects of climate change. The artist uses a colleague of imagery from Mauritius, a small island nation in the Indian Ocean connected through their ancestry. Using motifs of an idyllic paradise, the work aspires to connect to a higher place that contrasts with our current existence. Destabilising and severing our attachment with the present, creating an Einstein–Rosen bridge, connecting two distant points in time. What can we learn from our past mistakes, and what will our choices now mean for future generations? Illustrating that even the slightest variances in our present actions can lead to profound and completely divergent outcomes. Will we arrive at a place of safety, or will our complacency hinder our progress?
Kieran Butler, 80 years from now, installation view, 2022. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Visually the exhibition is rebellious and breaks away from the traditional white cube setting. The walls are painted in vivid colours, with a pink horizon line streaked across the gallery. Beach Towels are suspended by industrial chains symbolising travel, fantasy, and leisure sentiments. Drawing from the artist's personal histories, the towels become a catalyst for further explorations into the notions of colonialism, climate change, and identity, leaving behind the superficial and becoming weighted with expectation.
Kieran Butler, 80 years from now, installation view, 2022. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Encapsulated within the artworks is a series of seemingly random lyrics that provide a sense of nostalgia whilst also feeling contemporary. The text ‘We are one breath away’ was adopted from the song “FCKSHTUP!” by Zee Machine and chosen because Zee Machine is a celebrated queer musician breaking through into mainstream media. The lyrics provide a foundation for viewing the work in a joyful and liberating context.
Kieran Butler, 80 years from now, installation view, 2022. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Themes of the future within the exhibition are built upon the Solarpunk movement that imagines a future in which sustainability is an integral part of technology, connecting us to a bright and optimistic future. Embodying the essential punk ideals of egalitarianism, anti-capitalism, and gender equality. Where climate change is a problem of the past, the collective is striving to create a utopian future coexisting in balance with nature. While this genre is heavily influenced by fantasy and science fiction, it arose as a reaction against popular culture being dominated by narratives of post-apocalyptic and dystopian endings. Why is it that whenever we think of the future, it is always dark and dystopian? 80 years from now echos the ethos of solorpunk by imagining a queer collective future in which community is the central force to healing and transformation. We can only create a future that we can imagine. Offering an alternative community that seamlessly intersects one's social and political identities to forge new relationships.
Kieran Butler, 80 years from now, installation view, 2022. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
In the end, 80 years from now asks the question: does our survival depend on our ability to arrive at a future we call all see ourselves in.
-Amy Claire Mills
Roomsheet
Bio
For further information about Kieran Butler’s practice
PODCAST
In conversation with Kieran Butler and Amy Claire Mills
Episode 6 of Opening Drinks features Kieran Butler, presenter of the project 80 years from now (Verge, January 2022). Kieran is joined by their colleague and very wonderful emerging artist, Amy Claire Mills. In the episode, Mills and Butler chat about love, DJ Sophie, personal histories, the Matrix and beach towels.