In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986), Ursula K. Le Guin proposes a method of storytelling founded on gathering, collectivity, and non-linearity. This “bag of stars”, as the author calls it, reveals science fiction as “less a mythological genre than a realistic one”, rooted not in technology as a weapon of progress, but in its status as a cultural receptacle. ‘Future Relics’, then, is an exhibition which takes objects of the imagination as the artefacts of our future: relics meaning less the remnants of individual achievement, and instead, those of creation and materiality within an age defined by its digital immateriality. These works, which are all engaged with form as the container of meaning, compose a cultural carrier bag of objects whose temporalities stretch across past, present, and future.
Indeed, a concern with temporality underscores much of the artworks on display in this exhibition, which often seem as though they might be the treasures of future excavations. The cement reliefs of Nour Jaouda (b. 1997, Libya) are particularly concerned with the narratives inherent in archeology– their ornate surfaces nod to the layered architecture of Cairo, alluding to both personal narratives and collective histories. Similarly, the monolithic cross-section of an asphalt road presented by Linda Sanchez (b.1983, Thonon-les Bains, France) transposes the complexities and movements of everyday life into fixed form, as does the sculptural practice of Lulù Nuti (b. 1988), whose wrought iron structures become conduits for meaning. These works alternate between menacing and familiar; technological and organic. What does it mean to turn an object of use into one of art? This oscillation between destruction and creation is the subject of Jason Gringler (b. 1978 in Toronto, Canada)’s Tomb (2024), which embalms both industrial materials and failed artworks in a casing of resin.
Other works, such as that by Steven Claydon (b. 1969, London, UK), allude more directly to science fictive futures. Claydon’s metallic eagle, adorned with pre-dynastic Chinese sword coins and suspended in flight, is envisioned as an apocalyptic artefact of a past (present) civilisation. The cast used by the artist derives from a lost marble statue housed in the British Museum; Claydon subverts the imperialism associated with the gallery’s neighbour through his transposition of its treasures. Mathilde Albouy (b. 1997, France) and Apollinaria Broche (b. 1995, Moscow, Russia) are also concerned with speculation as a socially engaged act. Albouy draws on histories of feminist science fiction to invoke questions of constructed binaries, using scale and material to traverse the boundary between beauty and strength. Broche’s fantastical bronze works are similarly concerned with this superficial dualism; her ephemeral flowers and fairies are rendered transformed and concrete through the materials in which she sculpts them.
At the heart of ‘Future Relics’ is a concern for the narrative power of material, whether derived from explicitly industrial matter, such as in the practice of Matthew Peers (b. 1991, Manchester, UK), or the more sensual and fluid manipulation of form, as in Elinor Haynes’s soul-as-smoke structure, A Prayer (2025). What will these works– in theirconcrete undulations and steely curves– tell of the world in which we presently find ourselves? Rather than a story of battles, heroism and spilt blood, we can hope instead that it will be one of shared knowledge, and the persistence of creation across time.
