Galleries & Museums

I have gone to four galleries and one museum since I have been here and none of them are ones I was looking for. I'm just walking down the street...and there they are, beckoning me to come in. I love it! They are all free, but have donation boxes clearly displayed with a suggested donation (£1-2) What a great environment for nurturing a cultured society. I was in the Science Museum today (which is enormous by the way) and thinking how great this free admission is for families. Instead of spending a great deal of money and trying to cram everything into one day to get your money's worth, you can wander in, see a little bit and come back another day.
The Serpentine Gallery is in Hyde Park, a huge park right across form the RCA. I took a walk over to the park on Sunday, when I took a practice run to the college via bus and train to see if I could remember the route back that Barton had shown me. And there was this little building in the park and I saw it was the Serpentine and I had heard of it so I went in.
It is quite a high traffic and public gallery, but they seem to exhibit shows that are contemporary and make the public think a bit. They have a fabulous bookstore. Two Norwegian artists, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset were exhibiting "The Welfare Show" They had totally reconfigured the inside of the gallery to create a series of corridors that went around the centre of the gallery. I had to ask the attendents after I had spent some time in there what the gallery looked like before they did this. Then it turns out that my friend Dallas, works at the Serpentine setting up shows and so when I ran into him the second time he told me more about the construction, which of course will be deconstructed after the show (in the true spirit of Postmodernism!)
When you enter the gallery through swinging doors, you are confronted with a large sign, painted in white letters on a black wall, which reads "SOCKS AT WOOLWORTHS £1.25 A PAIR" In front of that and under a round skylight is a wheelchair with a helium balloon attached to it, entitled "Birthday 2002" It looked very forlorn and vacantly unhappy, not very celebratory as one would expect a birthday to be.
Travelling down another corridor you encounter a bank machine in the wall. On the floor in front of the bank machine is a sleeping baby in a cloth bassinette. This is titled "Modern Moses". When I first saw the baby I had to look quite long and carefully to determine whether it was alive or not. I watched others for some time. Many people didn't notice the baby and just glanced at the bank machine as if it was normal for there to be a bank machine in an art gallery. There were many families there so I am sure some people thought that someone had just set their baby down and were close by. Mothers looked concerned, fathers made jokes and children stared fascinated. "Is it alive?" was the most common question.
Travelling down another short corridor are two doors. One has a small window and glows pink. When you peer in you discover a small round table with a microphone on it and two chairs. A pink neon sign behind it says "The Welfare Show". This ironically brings a smile to most people's faces.
At the end of the corridor is an open space with 7 chairs set around the 3 walls. Security guards in full uniform are sitting there. They look up as you walk by. They guard nothing. I feel guilty, even though I haven't done anything.
Around the corner from there, is a tri-vision billboard. I know this is what it is called because the sheet I picked up at the start of the exhibition tells me the titles and materials. "This space can't be yours" is written in a different place on each side of the sign as it turns.
Across the corridor from that is a large window facing into a room which is in the centre of the building. The room contains a small version of a luggage carousel of the type you would see in an airport. On it sits one bag, going around endlessly. A set of concrete stairs with a hand rail protrude from the back wall, running up to an exit door. The stairs are broken halfway up and the rubble lies on the floor underneath them. Title? "Uncollected"
At the end of this corridor is a waiting room with a ticket dispenser on the wall, chairs along one wall, a plant in the corner and a LED clock reading 0:00. You can sit on the chairs, which face an exit door, but you can't go through those doors or take tickets from the dispenser. I sat and watched. The real security person, who wasn't in a uniform, had to keep reprimanding people. This one was entitled "It's the small things in life that really matter, blah, blah, blah, blah."
You enter "Interstage" via a pair of swinging doors with small round windows. This corridor holds two hospital beds outfitted with white sheets, pillows and comforters. A woman lies on one bed with her back to you facing the wall, her eyes blindly staring into space. Is she alive, dead or catatonic? There is a handrail along the wall opposite the beds and swinging doors at the other end.
Going through these doors brings you into "Go, Go, Go" a dancing pole with a round base lit up by flashing light bulbs. A mop lies across the steps leading up to the pole with a bucket, rubber gloves, and a "Caution Wet Floor" sign nearby.
This brings you back to the beginning of the exhibit and of course you can keep going around and around as many times as you like, which I think is their point. There is a funhouse quality to the show, but the subject matter is very serious. In thinking back and describing all these pieces, I have realized better how they fit together as a comment on our society and issues of poverty, healthcare, social policies and public spaces, as the artists intended.
The titles of each section are very important and give the viewer clues as to what the piece is about, and by going through a couple of times, you notice more and more things. The materials, objects and surroundings are so common, one tends to just glance at them and walk past, almost feeling like there is nothing there. At first it seemed like a quick read, but now after having some time to think about it, I believe there is a lot more there to absorbe than one gets from an initial reading.