Firstsite’S next exhibition looks set to be out of this world.

Starting on Sunday, News From Nowhere explored the relationship between art and science fiction.

It features sculpture, drawing, print, photography and film by 17 artists from the early 20th century to the present day, some newly-commissioned and some on loan from national and international collections.

The exhibition takes its title from the futuristic novel by artist, writer and designer William Morris, who helped establish the modern fantasy genre, and was a direct influence on such writers as JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.

Works include machine-like creatures in the sculpture of Lynn Chadwick and Lygia Clark and the early abstract films of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Mary Ellen Bute.

New work includes that of artists Mark Titchner and Mungo Thomson, the latter creating a psychedelic mural, using a colour negative of an image taken by the Hubble space telescope.

Kath Wood, Firstsite director, says: “We’ve had an excellent start to our First year already, with more than 120,000 visitors.

“That’s 80 per cent of our first-year target of 150,000 people.

“Our last exhibition was very popular, with a lot of interest in the Constables as well as Carl Andre’s bricks.

“This new show has a mixture of artforms and we’ve also changed the front entrance work, which I think visitors will find particularly striking.”

Following on from the Constable cloud studies in the previous exhibition, News From Nowhere features another of the area’s most celebrated artists, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, who died in 2005.

He is perhaps best known for the colourful mosaics he created at Tottenham Court Tube station, in London.

The Scottish-born artist lived just outside Thorpe-le-Soken for more than 30 years and was a visiting lecturer at the Colchester School of Art.

The new entrance piece referred to by Kath Wood is two animal sculptures by Lynn Chadwick.