EXHIBITION
Located in the newly refurbished Grade II listed Boland House on the grounds of Guy’s Hospital (a Mcdonald’s once ignobly resided here on the ground level), this multi-million dollar project now part of King’s College is set to give the Wellcome Collection some competition. Much like the Wellcome’s remit to locate the intersections of medicine and art, here the interdisciplines between science, health and art will be studied. The look and feel is ultra-modern, with a spacious and open ground floor plan encompassing a gift shop and cafe each of sleek and clean design with gallery space on the first level. 
The inaugural show explores the roots of addiction and avenues through which recovery may be possible-much of the material is interactive and immersive, film and video and gaming consoles figuring prominently. The seductive lures of social media and gambling, overconsumption of food and fashion, general information overload, the spiritual deprivations of a bulldozing consumerist society, are all addressed through the various works, their ill effects on both individuals and society at large. Through sheer force and scale of presence, technology is aiding potential for addiction, all of us susceptible, even those without predilections towards an addictive personality-it’s all too simple to disappear through many a cyber rabbit hole. 
Stigmas towards those afflicted are questioned and challenged-in a larger sense, addiction may be classed as a mental health concern, its victims helpless. The alarm of the show as you wander through its rooms is that it becomes easy to identify yourself somewhere on the spectrum of the issue. Latter rooms showcase how a style of performative theatre is aiding some vulnerable individuals, providing awareness and self-examination that are some of the first steps out of the mire. This new venue is a fine addition to London’s already impressive league of museum and gallery spaces. Hooked is on through 6 January 2019 
https://london.sciencegallery.com/news/hooked
Intermittently, names shiver and bubble into presence, inscribed by water, only to incrementally fade again, the water retreating in rivulets, to be replaced by yet another identity, a continuous process of reveal and erasure. Salcedo honours the individual otherwise lost in a collective statistical anonymity. The viewer is encouraged to gingerly step around the stains and contemplate (reverentially, as the space makes one feel) the enormity of the tragedy-the vast room mimics the sense of being adrift in a mighty sea. This is a holy chamber of witness-most spectators were stunned into silence. 
If only I could bring the same awe to Salcedo’s “Tabula Rasa”, but I’m afraid the metaphor in this case (at least for me) is stretched too far for resonance. A stark room displaying a variety of ordinary looking wooden tables reveals, upon closer inspection, cracks, fissures, fractures and rough edges, as if some violence has been visited upon them. In fact, Salcedo has savagely broken them apart, then reassembled them with great blunt abruptness, all delicacy and finesse drained.
That we now exist in a climate swelling with possible, increasingly more immediate calamity, only lends his images greater force and alarm. Dorland’s exploration of the concept of momento mori brings it up to date with very real contemporary concerns with a global society seemingly at wit’s end, mentally unfit. Playful as they are, an unease and disquiet are abundantly foregrounded; the canvasses hum with cloaked sinister bodings. 
Burly fists of impasto paint occasionally adorn the frame, a sudden net of meretricious weight. The images are gleeful and maniacal at once, a punk aesthetic present. Comic book and horror film tropes are in liberal use. In many ways, these images seem very of the moment. Terror Management Theory closed on 6 Oct
Sports allow for an environment in which violence and machismo is celebrated, an acceptable level of physicality between men portrayed, a way to play to the cultural norm. In absolute defiance, one wall of paintings depict masculine men engaged in a series of pornographic acts, a shock to hetero-normative structure. Stripes of green call forth, according to the artist, both the football field (or team colours) and cotton fields. From the time of slavery, the black body has been commodified and defined. A cage, with open door, invites one to consider enclosure, detainment, prison. 
Ababri does not want the viewer to be in the least comfortable-he wants to induce a permanent state of unrest and sweat, Billie Holiday’s lament of “Strange Fruit” and the tragedy of gay footballer Justin Fashanu bearing down on the senses. He wants us to consider deeply the impact of oppressive dynamics of social assumption on identity and behaviour. Here Is A Strange and Bitter Crop runs through 24 Nov 
The paintings are suffused in the brand red, and take their cues from the classic graphics of Marlboro and Ferrari, the graphic language of men’s magazines from yesteryear. Logan’s fragile prints, mere details of a fuller image that exists somewhere within-or past-the surrounding white space (that the image is partial, is a slender whisper of the whole, lends it great melancholy), are like impressions of memory and dream.
It’s perhaps a detail remembered rather than the whole experience, the detail being the reason, the mode for transport. Serendipitously, as it happened, an overhead pipe carrying a constant flow of water lent a soothing, calming backdrop to my stroll through Logan’s images-I thought it a deliberate audio feature to accompany the exhibition! How To Sell Death To The Living and Spaces Between run through 27 Oct 
Addressing the disquieting and ever-charged legacy of apartheid, Lehulere challenges “official” history and its “whitewashing” of cultural identity, symbolic references to student demonstrations, enforced relocations and subjugation inescapably present. Repurposed school desks and chairs, birdhouses, tyres, glass bottles, casts of his aunt’s hand (who was caught up calamitously in the Soweto student uprisings), porcelain dogs (suggesting Sirius, the dog-star) and blackboards combine into tangled, free-wheeling installations that speak to violence and upheaval, of attempt to colonise. 
Chalk scrawls upon a series of boards detail an astronomical lore, a contested celestial knowledge a European authority could not abide or consider an African culture possessing before their own apprehension. Striking black and white paintings pulse with a fight between presence and erasure. 
Quite beyond or through any historical engagement, the pieces themselves achieve a hushed, nearly devotional aesthetic (and strangely quiet, given their origins) beauty. This is Lahulere triumphantly reclaiming what others wished to destroy, the gallery rooms transformed into staged demonstrations of enduring power and voice. not even the departed stay grounded closes 20 Oct 
Even before entry, fabricated listings share window space with those of authentic nature (one very cleverly intersperses the conventionally mundane line details of the classic property listing with a slightly more anxious and unresolved “hidden” emotional and spiritual subtext, the feelings of disassociation and panic that can arise in the pursuit of buying a home). Another makes an appeal to a literal “alien” family that they will encounter nothing less than a warm welcome in their new domicile.
Home is of more humble origin, as a place of refuge and safety first, a basic human need. An entire “website” has been created around this exhibition, and meetings with an “agent” may even be booked on Saturdays during its run, giving the proceedings quite a meta twist. Brilliant. Unreal Estates is now closed, but please visit the website, as the creators intend to tour it around the UK, with local artists contributing to each iteration. 
Basquiat will pass through the mind, as well as Yinka Shonibare, even Picasso in the angularity of the figures. Each portrait is a stare into the interior worlds of its subject, every aspect just a bit unmoored-the physical, the emotional, the spiritual all a jumble-a flux of wild colour and pattern storming around and behind. The figures are not quite lost or torn apart, merely acknowledging their incoherence and disarray with good nature and modesty, directly embracing a truthful, terribly human mess. They are ready for the rumble. Bolaji extends them all a tender empathy. 
There’s a thrilling looseness to the style, a street energy that animates and fizzes with tremendous swirls of electric energy. Rituals of Energy closed on 4 Oct, but the gallery is committed to showcasing similar up-and-coming urban artists.
The descent is quite dramatic, and sparks all manner of anticipation, entering through one of the control room stations and commencing a steep downwards journey via a series of twisting stairwells until you emerge into a vast, sweeping stone vault, vibrations of passing traffic overhead creating its own eerie vehicular rhythm. On the day I attended, rainfall was heavy and unremitting and cascaded in absolute freefall down the back wall (which may have engendered a reshuffle of seating), only enhancing the earthiness of the environment. 
The seven-strong Marian Consort, performing a programme encompassing works from the Renaissance through to 20th century (music set to Emily Dickinson poems), voices lifting and countering and complementing, crafted spine-tingling feats of tone and cadence, enhanced by the glorious acoustics within the space. I was held captive for the entirety of the hour of the performance (and I will never forget the incongruent visual of the members holding not songbooks with clip lights, but rather the very modern iPad, in a room so clearly claimed by a singularly different age-the audience could sense the close of a piece when the singers moved to click off their devices’ illumination).
There was much faffing about as people gathered in front of the tunnel, the organisers assuring themselves that all had properly downloaded the files, handing out earphones (although, as instructed, most people had brought their own, less cumbersome, buds). A big show was made of queuing up and releasing each person into the tunnel in staggered fashion (the first file, seven minutes long, was meant to indicate when each person should be released-you had to listen for your prompt), but this could have been achieved much easier with a guide simply indicating when you could go (really, what was the purpose of the first file if it was just a holding mechanism? Very confusing, and superfluous). 
The second file (the only one of use) was switched on as you finally made your way down the stairs, but even this proved rather unilluminating, the increasingly irritating cadence of the small girl’s voice exhorting us to touch the walls and listen to the flow of people through the space, contemplate the water held on all sides. The way in which all participants had been dispersed was meant to mimic the choreography of a river dance. Why the voice on the file could not have been more sensibly adult, spoken of the tunnel’s specific history, imparted any rich knowledge of the Woolwich area and its military legacy, is a mystery. 
Continually, the spell (weak though it be) was broken by the volume at which many passersby spoke, the sounds of distracting public movement all around that violated the headset. On turning around, as recommended by my infantile host just before climbing the stairs that would blessedly bring my walk to its end, to contemplate the tunnel one last time and watch my fellow wanderers, I felt..unchanged and unmoved. I emerged with only a pointedly burdensome sense of disappointment and slight outrage. And shock. The whole experience lacked any sort of sophistication or edge. 
At least I was able to at last have an excuse to tour the buildings of Royal Arsenal, a long-held unrealised ambition. It is only for this sake that the day was not a crushing disaster. 
tom///out 