Emi­ly Floyd
Far Rain­bow

Tak­ing its title from a Sovi­et sci­ence-fic­tion sto­ry set on the imag­i­nary plan­et Rain­bow, this sur­vey is drawn from the past ten years of Emi­ly Floyd’s prac­tice while also includ­ing new works devised specif­i­cal­ly for Heide’s gal­leries and grounds. Utopi­an think­ing of var­i­ous types — also at the heart of much sci­ence fic­tion — has been a con­tin­u­al source of inspi­ra­tion for Floyd, and her work draws from the lega­cies of rad­i­cal mod­ernism, explor­ing ideas about com­mu­ni­ty, activism and alter­na­tive education.

In this exhi­bi­tion her new instal­la­tion Far Rain­bow, for exam­ple, has been informed by the New Lanark school­room estab­lished by vision­ary indus­tri­al­ist Robert Owen (1771−1858), and she increas­ing­ly refers to dig­i­tal col­lec­tive mod­els, as typ­i­fied by the free and open-source oper­at­ing sys­tem Linux.

Floyd is wide­ly known for her large-scale sculp­tures and pub­lic com­mis­sions ref­er­enc­ing chil­drens’ edu­ca­tion­al toys — like those made in the tra­di­tion of archi­tect and edu­ca­tion­al­ist Rudolf Stein­er (1861 – 1925) or by her own toy-mak­er father and grandmother.

A new per­ma­nent out­door sculp­ture Abstract Labour com­mis­sioned by Hei­de was unveiled at the time of the exhi­bi­tion. The sculp­ture was fund­ed by the Vic­to­ri­an Gov­ern­ment through Arts Vic­to­ria and the Vic­to­ri­an Pub­lic Sculp­ture Fund.

Curat­ed by Sue Cramer