Keith Coventry
Sceaux Gardens Estate, 1995
Oil on canvas, painted wood and glass
96.5 x 72 cm
GA2218

Purchased through the Contemporary Art Society Special Collection Scheme with Lottery funding from Arts Council England, 2000.

Sceaux Gardens Estate is a painting based upon a map of the eponymous council housing estate in South London. Formally referencing the work of Kasimir Malevich, the work compares the utopian models developed within Modernism and Russian Suprematism with the idealism of post war urban regeneration. The work highlights a failed form of social utopia in which idealism and reality are at odds with each other. Coventry’s adoption of an aesthetic purity sits side by side with notions of contemporary social degeneration in an intersection of modern art and modern political history.