“The word utopia means ‘no place’, and is synonymous with both a visionary system of sociopolitical perfection and the inherent inability of ever being able to attain it. Subtopia consists in the universal sub-urbanisation not merely of the country, or of the town, but of town and country – the whole land surface. Suburbia becomes Utopia, Utopia becomes suburbia” – Ian Nairn, 1955

Togetherness: Notes on Subtopia is a collaborative project between South Kiosk, London and The Old Waterworks in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.

Exploring the pioneering work of the architecture critic Ian Nairn, the project looks to his 1955 manifesto, Outrage, first published in Architectural Review. For Outrage, Nairn embarked on a series of 25 mile long dérives across England in which he observed and documented post war urban sprawl and the growth of civic architecture.

Commissioning new work from three artists, Togetherness uses Nairn’s writing as a starting point to explore post-war architecture along the route of the Thames (the arterial waterway that links the locations of the two project spaces) probing themes of population movement, regeneration and the erasure of history.

Togetherness: Notes on Subtopia brings together new works from Shaun C Badham, Donald Harding, Maeve O Neill & Carlos Romo-Melgar.