Join our Big Give Christmas Challenge this week! Every pound you give today via BigGive.org will be doubled (up to £30,740!)  – providing children and families with free creative activities and nutritious hot meals over the winter weekends and school holidays.

Give a child a happier future this Christmas – donate today!

Have your donation doubled now

Concrete Dreams: Just Can’t Get Enough

Exhibitions: FREE

Concrete Dreams: Just Can’t Get Enough

Archive

Saturday 20 April - Sunday 10 November 2024

Galleries

View Opening Times

Jordan Cook, Day End, 2023

Thomas Holland, This Is Science Fiction, 2020-2021

How do urban transformations shape our identities?

 

Presented 75 years after Basildon in Essex was designated a New Town, ‘Concrete Dreams: Just Can’t Get Enough’ reflects on the influence of the Britain’s post-war new town movement on cultural identity, and the impact of policy decisions on individual lives.

Established after the Second World War to alleviate the nation’s housing shortage, 22 New Towns were developed across the UK during the late 1940s – 1950s.

To celebrate 10 years of the Firstsite Collectors’ Group Bursary Awards, the exhibition brings together East Anglian artists who received or applied for these awards and are also based or born in New Towns or housing developments on the borders of East London – to examine our relationship with this unique social engineering project.

Explore the experiences of those who moved to New Towns and the communities who were affected by these developments as busting city life of East London collided with quiet suburbia – creating a melting pot of ideas and cultures.   

Featuring paintings, photography, poetry and drawing, embark on a unique journey that takes you through stories around place and memory, migration, and belonging, to reveal the complexities of our relationships to class and housing planning.

Explore geographical paintings, including boundary lines of Basildon’s villages, visit Harlow New Town through auto-biographical series of charcoal drawings and discover portraits that offer intimate studies of cross generational family and friends.

Alongside the biographical paintings, investigate class experience and queer folklore from council estates in East London through visual poems and videos, and discover photography that disrupts the way media portrays Essex through collaborative costumes.

 

Artists featured in this exhibition:

Elsa James, George Morgan, Halla Groves-Raines, Lu Williams, Shaun Badham, Thomas Holland, Jordan Cook, Aislin Evans.

 

Firstsite Collector’s Group was established in 2014, and raises vital funds for Firstsite, through sponsoring exhibitions and artistic events to enhance the gallery’s programme. Find out more here.
OPENING TIMES

Monday

Closed

Tuesday

10am - 5pm

Wednesday

10am - 5pm

Thursday

10am - 10pm

Friday

10am - 10pm

Saturday

10am - 10pm

Sunday

10am - 5pm

Join our Mosaic membership and get more from your visit

Mosaic members get unlimited free access to all our film screenings, 20% off our event cinema screenings, 20% off our workshops and talks, 10% off in our café and shop. Plus you don’t have to pay any ticket fees.

As a Mosaic member, you help support our community projects and events and keep our exhibitions free to everyone.

Not a member?

Share with a friend:

You might also like...

Exhibitions

Free

Tim Noble & Sue Webster: Love and Hate at Firstsite

In this presentation, seven light sculptures by Noble & Webster illuminate areas of the Firstsite building with pops of glimmering colour.

Find out more
Welcome area at Firstsite. 'Big Hello' (2018) Peter Liversidge. Photo by Jayne Lloyd.

Join our mailing list

Sign up to our mailing list to receive the latest updates from Firstsite.