With the consistently wonderful Arts Gallery only days away from demolition, Tom Jeffreys checks out the gallery's last ever exhibition - Mike Ballard's all-encompassing The All of Everything.
Of course it was announced some time last year, but these things can take time to sink in. The Arts Gallery is closing. Set up in 1993 by University of the Arts London – and later refurbished in 2006 – the Arts Gallery has consistently championed cutting edge contemporary artists, and exhibited work by the likes of Peter Doig, Gavin Turk, Chris Ofili, Sarah Lucas and Martin Creed. Over the three years I've been visiting, their exhibitions have been consitently innovative, interesting and fun. Last July's Tom Hunter solo show there, for example, was one of my personal highlights of 2009.
But on 1st March, the gallery – situated between Gagosian and Bond Street tube station – is being demolished in order to make way for Crossrail. So the gallery – along with the various departments of University of the Arts London – are upping stics and relocating to new preimses in Holborn. The final exhibition in the gallery is The All of Everything, an immersive installation by contemporary artist and DJ Mike Ballard. The show opened in December last year, but with only ten days to go until the gallery closes to the public for ever, I thought I'd come and administer the last rites, as it were.
It's really quite amazing how Ballard has completely transformed the entire gallery. Not confined by the need to return the space to pristeen whiteness, he's run riot. Floors and walls and ceiling are covered, every inch, in a mish-mash of collaged symbolism: from Egyptian heiroglyphics via 1960s Pop Art and contemporary music to a full-scale galactic exploration. The ceiling is primarily made up of painstakingly put together photocollage – with Renaissance and Baroque imagery featuring particularly strongly. It's like a Xerox Sistine Chapel!
Along with a video and sound piece – set into the eyes of a pharaoh's skull – the whole installation consists of “a supersonic journey through a galaxy of hypermodern and prehistoric art”. In short, it's an adventure. You keep spotting little references – a pair of cherubs here, a tube train there. It's about endings, obviously, but also about beginnings. It's a piece about history – and soon it will be.
Tonight the gallery is hosting A Vandals' Take-Away Art and Dinner, during which the video piece and its surrounding false wall are being dismantled and taken away in Chinese take-away cartons. But the rest of this wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling mash-up of symbols, references and imagery is open to the public until 20th February. Pop along, take in the history of the Arts Gallery, and soak up Ballard's unique visionary work. Before the wrecking ball descends...
Mike Ballard – The All of Everything is at The Arts Gallery until 20th February 2010.
Click here to see all London exhibitions.
Click here for things to do in London.
Add an event