Introduction 2021

For the lucky ones this has been the strangest of years: a year of stasis and seclusion, of staying at home, of skies largely empty of contrails from aeroplanes. A year with so few of those comings and goings which define our modern lives, a year at its best, of desultory meetings in parks or playgrounds. Going nowhere. Braving the cold. And for so many, on top of these quotidian privations, it’s been a year of painful and untimely losses. This strange year that thinned out all our lives, that saw us shrink back into ourselves as we watched the pandemic unfold across the globe on our devices and screens, doom-scrolling through a daily diet of bad news. So what is perhaps most hopeful about this exhibition is that in its own way it offers a modest corrective. It allows us to do what we’ve been doing all year, to click through, to scroll down, and yet arrive at place and a state of mind which is perhaps a little different. It celebrates diversity; a plurality of voice, and of vision, as it shrinks for a moment those distances which have seemed of wider than ever. Bucheon, Dunedin, Heidelberg, Krakow, Lviv, Melbourne, Milan, Odessa, Tartu, Ulyanavosk, Wonju, Leeuwarden, Reykajvik, simply saying this litany of places names aloud takes you on a journey. There's so much here to be seen and felt and thought about, with a thrilling sense of travel and movement as you flow though this richness of place and language. It’s an exhibition to be returned to time and again. Reminding us of the world out there and our connection to it and to each other.