A group exhibition including works by Anonymous, Charles Avery, Marcel Broodthaers, Steven Claydon, Alexandre da Cunha, Matthew Darbyshire, Ruth Ewan, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Barry Flanagan, Lucio Fontana, Andy Holden, Yayoi Kusama, George Henry Longly, Ella McCartney, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Katie Schwab and David Thorpe
A series of objects forming an incomplete history from the 8th millennium BCE to the present day
Object led narratives are the backbone of museological display. We rely upon them for knowledge of a particular culture, place, or time and yet so much of what we know from archaeology and history is conjecture or best guess. The process turns upon a temporally and culturally specific participant filling in the details, evolving meaning and narrative to shape disparate objects into a coherent framework. The Science of Imaginary Solutions asserts the power of objects to tell us truths about human history, while celebrating the contingency of their meaning across changing epochs and contexts. The exhibition queries the foundation of knowledge in object led history, picking at the thin division between factual and fictional narratives by giving equal weight to historical artefacts and the work of modern and contemporary artists addressing related themes. Moving back and forth across cultures, places and periods over thousands of years, the exhibition presents a restless, shifting analysis of objects and their role in our understanding of humanity through material culture.
The Science of Imaginary Solutions takes its title from the work of absurdist playwright Alfred Jarry (1873 – 1907) best known for his play Ubu the King (1896). Developed across numerous works, ‘pataphysics, or ‘the science of imaginary solutions’, is a nonsensical philosophy, existing in the realm beyond metaphysics to examine imaginary phenomena. It exerted a significant influence upon the subsequent movements of Dada and Surrealism.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/21626