John Kippin : Romanitas

19 May-24 Jun 2018

Overview

“...we're going to build an entirely new political movement...an economic nationalist movement...[with] a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan...We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s..." Steve Bannon, Chief Strategist to president-elect Trump, November 2016 In Romanitas, Kippin reflects upon both the state of contemporary politics, in relation to that what WH Auden called the “low, dishonest decade” of the 1930s. In Romanitas Kippin dwells on the image of the future built by a far-right nationalist regime that still exists, to picture the daily life lived amongst it. The work can be read as a kind of portrait of Europe in our time. Kippin’s starting point in creating the work was Winston Churchill’s famous phrase: “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”.