Penny Woolcock's Utopia, The Roundhouse ★★★★★

Utopia, The Roundhouse review: Culture Whisper says ★★★★★
Created by multi-media artist Penny Woolcock and famed Glastonbury Festival stage designers Block 9, Utopia is an installation that invites you to consider what is really important by exposing society's reliance on materialism. 
What is Utopia: installation and adventure
Dotted around are copies of Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia... At first it strikes you as a simple materialism versus poverty narrative, a patronising message of greed versus poverty. But, as you enter through the curtains, illuminated with their stark messages of consumerism, Utopia's narrative becomes more complex.
Throughout Woolcock's exhibition, scattered amongst rubble and superfluity of possessions, are a maze of boxes that bear definitions of fame, popularity, desire, and aligned with voiced testimonies, some shocking, some funny, some deeply moving. As you navigate the labyrinth of emotional complexity, different textures begin to emerge, reflect how individual voices get lost amidst base desire and complex societal issues that demand expedience at other expenses. 
Whilst the testimonies are many and shocking, Woolcock's creative journey doesn’t offer any practical means of creating a utopian society. At times it came close to going beyond what we already know about ideals of good and bad, but for the most part, the experience of Utopia is more entertaining than perception altering.