City Entwined

Paradise Row, 25 March - 7 May 2022

A purple oval is painted over the front of the gallery, skewing its straight lines. Inside, the work in the window is partitioned from the rest of the space, all of it saturated with music from one of the video works. Sections of the wall are painted black and latticed with a purple grid, echoing the metal partitions which have been left visible and knitting the space together with a sure sense of style. The style is that of a commercial or office-type space refitted for a temporary art installation, rough and ready but chic.

This appearance brings to mind the kind of artist-led spaces where many of the artists included in this group show work. Think refitted warehouses, anarchistic takeovers of derelict buildings in South East London or Hackney. 

The work fits nicely into these surroundings. Two sculptures by Gabriela Pelczarska subvert the expectations of their weighty industrial materials. Stone spheres sink into folded concrete pillows; a large concrete girder is precariously strapped to a stone ball with a purple lifting strap. As on the walls, the purple holds it together, here literally as well as aesthetically. 

The video work Ekpyrosis by Léa Porré opens with a line of exaggeratedly Gothic text saying 'the ancients called it cosmic fire'. The work goes on to simulate the destruction of a Sims-style world with great boiling pools of lava: ancient eschatology in video game graphics. You might think of Ekpyrosis as a visualisation of our present moment in history, injected with a good deal of gallows humour. The end times are nigh, we are told each day on the news: let's think about what they might be like! 

Ekpyrosis is, needless to say, drenched in irony. Is that my Sims character signified by the spinning diamond above the hellfire? Irony, camp, social critique, and, increasingly, an interest in mythology and mysticism are the hallmarks of contemporary art, all abundant in this show, which aims to capture the spirit of London's independent art scene. 

This spirit traces its allegiance back to earlier moments of the 'artist-led', pivotal in establishing a lively contemporary art scene in London. An accompanying essay by Hector Campbell tells the history of the London artist-led exhibition, inaugurated in 1988 by Damien Hirst's Freeze show which he put together while still a student, and which Campbell claims is a forerunner of City Entwined. 

One of the exciting things about the artist-led at the time of Hirst et al. was that it was disruptive. As Campbell writes, it informed Nicholas Serota's decision to build the new Tate Modern in a disused power station on the Southbank. The missing wall panel and the bare metal girders in City Entwined attest to this legacy, but they are not disruptive. The work in the show is varied in appearance, but overall it lacks the transgression of those early moments in the 80s and 90s. There is some good work here, tastefully presented for a well established London contemporary art scene, its market eager, its acceptance assured. 

Is that the spirit of the artist-led?