Jennifer & Kevin McCoy

A Constant World (2007) & I Number The Stars (2004)

20 June - 28 July

Weds - Sat, 12-5.30pm at VIVID

VIVID is delighted to announce a new collaboration with BFI Southbank. Tiny, Funny, Big and Sad  marks the Birmingham debut of the acclaimed New York based artists Jennifer & Kevin McCoy.  The exhibition tours to VIVID from the opening venue, the gallery at BFI Southbank in London.

Central to the exhibition is new commission 'The Constant World', a ceiling-mounted sculpture consisting of interconnected metal spheres, models and lights which uses 36 live video cameras to construct a miniature universe based in part on the work of visionary Dutch architect Constant Nieuwenhuys.

Between 1956 and 1974, Constant created a series of drawings and models for a visionary city called New Babylon. New Babylon proposed a ‘camp for nomads on a planetary scale', a space where people could move freely between temporary habitats that would adapt to meet their physical and emotional needs and whims. Constant's elevated city inspired the dystopian film-noir type story set in the imaginary city found in the McCoys' commission. The figures and spaces of this work are captured by live video feed, and sequenced into a huge screen narrative.

Alongside this will be the first UK outing for I Number The Stars, which features obsessively detailed deconstruction of the TV series Star Trek.

The exhibition will be accompanied by ‘Dream Spaces', a season of screenings and talks for Architecture Week 2007 which will explore the imaginative worlds suggested by the works of the McCoys, and includes contributions from author Sadie Plant (The Most Radical Gesture:The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age, 1992), Nic Clear (Bartlett School of Architecture) and Kevin McCoy.

Dream Spaces>