The Museum of the People will open on 17th July 2009 
www.utrophia.net Curator: Evie Manning with help from artists and Utrophia team.

The Museum of the People invites spectators to participate in the creation of contemporary legacies and contribute their own record of contemporary events for posterity.

Featured artists (the People): Christina Mitrentse- ( THE SECRET SCHOOL) 

The ‘Secret School’ manifests itself as an interactive montage of artifacts derived from the Greek myth and Folk of the Secret School which debunks the credibility of historical discourses. The Greek artist Christina Mitrentse has responded to this myth by creating a solo project originally located as a site-specific installation in a World War II bomb –shelter in London in August 2005 just after the London Bombing.
According to the secret school narrative, during the Ottoman suppression the Greek populace used to secretly organise small underground schools in an effort to sustain their education. These were said to have convened in churches, monasteries or on other church grounds, usually at night. Mitrentse’s project awakens the emotional state and uncovers the atmosphere in which “homeless”, populations can find educational, cultural and spiritual shelter. It delivers a system that connects Education, Cultural regeneration, Fiction and Political freedom. This collective space reveals the form of relational sites in contemporary society by describing the heteroclite relationship among the them.The artist brings all the artifacts together in a non-hierarchical setting to question the process of observing, collecting, recording and displaying in terms of how data is circulated in a number of institutions such as school, library, church, academia, gallery and museum.The secret school acts as a metaphor for any contemporary social space which has subversive counter cultural associations. It recommends a real heterotopy acting as an ‘esoteric’ space which has a fictional attribute while it becomes a carrier in which the questions of how we perceive knowledge can be communicated.

 Other artists part of the show: StephenMolyneux, Ruth Fettis, Garry Cook, Michelle Wren, Emma Grant, Thom Shaw, RyanOrmonde, Ben Cummins, Mick Shaw, Eva Datta, Rachel Johnston, Matt Smith, Rob Bidder, Andrew Kerr, Karin Van Der Plass, Naomi Smyth, Jason Beech, Amy Ferguson, Astrid Sarkissian, Amy Clarkson, Giuliana Sommantico, Katarzyna Perlak, Sam Pullin, Coco Banks, Kate Guscott and Yvie Mason. The inaugural exhibition of the Museum of the People is a group show and will feature elements of the Museum’s current collection along with an electronic music symposium DJ Tendraw and performance from Coco Banks on the opening.“History is who we are and why we are the way we are” David C. McCullough The Museum of the People is a museum collection made by artists. The collection will allow spectators to access historical and contemporary events through visual art, sculpture, performance, and audio recordings.This unique museum relates directly to peoples’ own history and experience, offering personal, independent and idiosyncratic aspects of the history of our world."All history is contemporary history" - Benedetto Croce Essentially the Museum of the People exists to explore hidden histories, challenge notions of objectivity and re-interpret historical events from a contemporary perspective. For the museum’s first exhibition the themes explored will include: ‘The People and the Law,’ ‘The People and the Land,’ ‘The People on Your Street’. Launch Date: Friday 17th July 2009, 7pm, Performances from 8pm Duration: 17th July 2009- 31st July 2009 Opening Times: Thursday-Sunday, 12pm-7pm Utrophia Project Space (www.utrophia.net) 136 Tanners Hill, SE8 4QD