FACT becomes an alterate museum for new exhibition

An ‘alternate museum’ of artworks forms the heart of a new exhibition at FACT this autumn.

Future Ages Will Wonder features work by nine UK and international artists including Larry Achiampong and David Blandy.

It aims to use science and technology to both question our past and to offer new ways of understanding who we are and where we belong.

Sculpture, textiles and photography are brought together with virtual reality and synthetic DNA in the work which includes three new commissions.

Achiampong and Blandy have collaborated with the archaeology department at the University of Liverpool to create their new work. They present a CGI moving artwork which invites viewers on an epic journey through time from colonial sites of archaeology to present day DNA mining and social media servers.

Yarli Allison has produced a new multimedia installation that includes watercolour drawings and an immersive Virtual Reality film that recreates Liverpool’s old Chinatown and tells the stories of its lost Chinese sailors.

And the third new commission, Fermented Flower, comes from artist duo Breakwater (Youngsook Choi and Taey Iohe). They have created a ‘healing’ tapestry and audio installation which interweaves historical images with botanical symbols.

Above: Dust to Data (2021) by Larry Achiampong and David Blandy. Top: Miku Aoki - Zoe (2019). Images courtesy of the artists.

Other works are by Ai Hasegowa, Trisha Baga and Boedi Widjaja, while visitors to the Wood Street venue will be greeted by an installation by Miku Aoki which echoes a Victorian museum and a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ filled with tapestry hangings and stuffed mutant specimens.

Future Ages Will Wonder launches Radical Ancestry, a year-long exploration into the sense of belonging.

Over the next 12 months, FACT will host a programme of exhibitions, projects, residencies and events which will look at how history, geography, biology and culture shape our ancestral history and question how technology can help us to explore new ways of thinking about and experimenting with who we are.

Future Ages Will Wonder is at FACT until February 20, 2022. The exhibition is open from Wednesday to Sunday and is free.