Toby Futers
Toby Futers is a multidisciplinary artist from South-East London. His work focuses on the obscure and arcane in a manner of study and calculation. Themes within his work are often inspired by dystopian ideology and imagery. He often credits Kurt Vonnegut's novel, 'Slaughterhouse 5', or Philip K. Dick's novel, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', as sources for his aesthetic, going as far as producing work under the pseudonym 'Billy Pilgrim', the main character, of Vonnegut's novel, who becomes ‘unstuck from time’. The concept within Futers’ work is utilised in a format of ‘answer’ as if he poses the audience a fundamental question and proceeds to form a reply along with them. Subsequently, underlining topics of political subversion reveal themselves in a paradigm of ‘exposure’, bringing light to his consistent dystopian comparisons. The Underworld Exhibition is an answer to a strange hidden nature within the modern-day world. In this exhibition, Futers provides commentary on the present by symbolising past events and linking them to categorized foundational structures such as Home, Emotion, and things that do not exist (as shown in 'Underworld Concept').