Cleverly buried in large photographs of barren tundra or inhospitable desert landscapes are some sinister scale models of super-villain hideaways or remote boltholes – one of which is actually based on the Montana shack briefly inhabited by the Unabomber. The decidedly James Bond-esque title of this show, ‘The World is Still Big’, reinforces the possibility of creating these alternative, fictional living arrangements in reality, as the artist himself has done just outside the gallery’s back door.
Like one of his imaginary backwoodsman, Alex Hartley has taken up semi-permanent residence in his ‘Dropper’, a geodesic dome modelled on Drop City, a boho-commune set up in Colorado in 1965. Built from rusted, weather-beaten panels, it’s a reminder that only a thin veneer of social fabric – in this case the gallery’s duck pond – that separates us from becoming lonely outsiders ourselves.
Back inside, Hartley is presenting documentation and detritus from his discovery and annexation of ‘Nowhereisland’ from an Arctic ice flow in 2004. He has since set it up as a sovereign nation, albeit with a counter-cultural, open-door citizenship policy and, so far, no political leanings or binding constitution. This 40 x 8 metre lump of grey moraine will tour the south-west coastline of England next year, from Weymouth to Bristol, as part of the Cultural Olympiad, picking up new Nowherians along the way.
Despite some megalomaniacal touches, these projects are not the demented ramblings of a dystopian dreamer, but the considered propositions for a gently anti-establishment, coexistent community by a quiet Devonian and reformed YBA, who invites me in for a cup of tea.