The line between rubbish and art has been trampled over for decades, but this group show at the bottom of a towering office block stomps it to pieces.
The space is pitch dark, its windows blacked out. A heat lamp hangs over a ceramic ear, a landline phone lies on the ground ringing incessantly; there are sheets of scrap wood, a discarded vacuum cleaner, rotting fruit, images of corporate offices smeared in Vaseline.
The artists here aren’t dealing with detritus, this isn’t stuff that’s thrown away, it’s stuff that’s left behind; stuff so meaningless that you can’t even be bothered to chuck it, you just forget it.
There are bits hidden away: in the back, a huge assemblage of rusted scrap metal by Eden McDowell sprays fetid water every 20 minutes, a book about London’s exploitative post-war property boom is shoved in a cupboard by Malcolm Bradley, a fly on a piece of porcelain tucked into an old dishwasher by Mariette Moor. Andrew Kernan’s works are the subtlest, slightest, easiest to miss. There’s a fly on a window sill, some fingerprints on metal; they’re pieces that make you question what is or isn’t an artwork. George Richardson’s unanswered phone and stack of metal envelopes are disconcertingly desolate, awkwardly miserable bits of theatrical rubbish.
Not all the work here is great, and though the low lighting makes for a good atmosphere it also makes it hard to see a lot of the art. But where the show succeeds is in creating a feeling of discomfort and dereliction, a feeling of a place that has been trashed and discarded, a city that’s been consumed and spat out. When everything’s been used up, this is all that’s left: some dust, some bugs, and a big old mess.