Press Information
The Golden Space City of God, Richard Grayson’s third exhibition at Matt’s Gallery, is a large-scale video installation with sound featuring a new choral work performed by a 26-piece choir. Within the gallery, theatre drapes and plastic stacking chairs give the impression of a space linked to community expression and exchange – a church or community hall – that speaks of the formation of group identities and ideas of improvement and aspiration.

The Golden Space City of God score was composed by Leo Chadburn based on a libretto by the artist – which appears as subtitles in the video work – abstracted from a website associated with The Family, a community that developed from the 1960s cult Children of God. It is based upon texts that give a detailed prediction of events leading up to the end of the world, drawn from the Book of Revelation and re-imagined through the languages and imagery of science fiction. They describe the widespread economic and social unrest that will spread across the globe following an oil crisis and the collapse of dollar-based economies. Out of this chaos a world leader emerges, assisted by UFOs, who establishes a worldwide government through his use of credit and barcode technologies, pin numbers, UNESCO and the European Economic Community…

He builds a giant robot and Capitalism is abolished;
Jesus returns to Earth to fight against his empire and establish a kingdom of the saved;
A thousand years pass where survivors live in an ideal society based on an agrarian economy of exchange, and the elect – who have been given new supernatural indestructible bodies – rule over the rest of humankind, using the power of invisibility to police them effectively;
The masses rise again only to be defeated by fire and plague and God descends in the biggest space ship ever built, the Golden Space City, to take the elect away to explore and colonise new planets and galaxies…

The Golden Space City of God was filmed at Say Si in San Antonio, Texas on Saturday 14 March 2009 has been commissioned and produced by Artpace, San Antonio and Matt’s Gallery, London.

To see work in progress for this exhibition click here

Biography
Selected Solo Exhibitions 2006 Suspicious Fires, Yuill/Crowley Gallery, Sydney 2005 Intelligence, Matt’s Gallery, London 2004 Messiah, Matt’s Gallery, London and Yuill/Crowley Gallery, Sydney; The Messiah, Kunstlerhaus Gethanien, Berlin 2002 A Diary, A History, A Walk up the Hill, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; Ways the World Ends, Yuill/Crowley Gallery, Sydney 2000 Negative Space (things I don’t understand), Yuill/Crowley Gallery, Sydney 1999 1000 accidents/Ahistoryofreading, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Ahistoryofreading Artspace, Sydney 1998 A Famous Struggle/VariousThings Explained, Contemporary Art Centre, Adelaide Selected Group Exhibitions 2009 International Artist in Residence: New Works 09.01. curated by Trevor Smith at Artpace, San Antonio, Texas 2008 Obscurum Obscurantis Tallin Arthoone, Estonia 2007 A Number of Worlds Resembling Our Own Smart Project Space, Amsterdam; Navigations Per Forma Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin 2006 Happy Believers 7th Werkleitz Biennial, Halle Germany 2005 Art Unlimited Basel; Project 3 CACSA Adelaide; Electric Renaissance Culture-Centre Halle; Gott sehen - Das Überirdische als Thema derZeitgenössischen Kunst Kunstmuseum des Kantons Thurgau, Kartause Ittingen, Switzerland 2004 Cartographies Performance Space, Sydney; Planet B Magazin 4 Vorarlberger Kunstverein and Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz Selected Exhibitions as Curator 2007 Scary Movie Contemporary Art Centre, Adelaide 2006 This Will Not Happen Without You (Basement to Locus 1979 - 2007) (Arts Council touring exhibition) John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle and Belfast University; A Secret Service (Hayward Gallery touring exhibition) Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill and The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester 2002 Sydney Biennale (The World May Be) Fantastic Sydney, Australia