First up, if you were expecting to learn about the history of balloons on a trip to London’s newest ‘museum’, then you’re going to be disappointed. Balloon Museum is essentially a grabby name for what you might call an exhibition of inflatable art, but might also call a playground with pretensions.
It’s a weird concept: I don’t want to be snarky about any of the 18 artists participating in this pop-up outlet of what’s building to be a global franchise, but none of them are famous, and most of them made their artworks last year, presumably as direct commissions from the ‘museum’. Nominally the venue is the Balloon Museum and the exhibition is called ‘Emotionair’, but venue and exhibition would seem to be essentially the same thing. Reading the earnest descriptions of each of the pieces – alongside what emotion it’s meant to stir up (example: ‘sentience’) I struggled to determine whether this was all sincerely intended or if there’s some sort of tax reason for framing this as a serious art exhibition.
I’m not saying it’s bad art, but the point is that the Balloon Museum has been so wholeheartedly received by the public as a play-area-slash-insta-backdrop – which I would say seems to have been the plan all along – that assessing it as an art exhibition seems somewhat absurd. I mean, some of it is definitely bad art: Geraldo Zamproni’s ‘Volatile Structure’ just seems to be two big red inflatable pillows and that’s it. By contrast Alex Schweder’s ‘The Third Thing’ has a certain something – a giant mirrorball and a sort of mass of white fur inflating and deflating in disconcerting fashion were, at the very least, a creatively unsettling way of tackling the concept of, uh, balloons.
I’m not saying it’s bad art, but assessing it as an art exhibition seems somewhat absurd.
But even if it doesn’t say it’s aimed at kids, it is basically aimed at kids. My eldest asked if we could visit after a nine-year-old friend of his did a video on his YouTube channel about it. Children are talking about this place. The centrepiece of the ‘museum’ is a timed session in ‘Hyperfeeling’ by Hyperstudio, basically a large swimming pool full of yellow balls that’s kind of like a ball pit on acid - deep and slippery with a big, psychedelic ball-shaped screen that descends from the ceiling into the middle of it. Ignore the ludicrous accompanying text and it is a hoot. It’s by no means the only tactile immersive installation and long story short my kids had a wonderful time. And why wouldn’t they: it’s like a soft play injected with at least enough genuine artistic sensibility to distort it into wild maximalist forms that are fairly mind-blowing to a tween, total stimulation of all the senses. I also took a few very nice photos that you can check out on my Instagram account.
If I were to be purely assessing the Balloon Museum as a children’s play experience I’d be tempted to slip it an extra star, duly noting that not every exhibit is of great appeal to youngsters, and that £31 is a pretty ridiculous price for an adult ticket. The frustration is that it steadfastly maintains it’s an art exhibition. I’m pretty sure its audience mostly knows the truth, but still, on its own officially designated terms the Balloon Museum is a failure – a rebrand and a price cut away from being the family fun factory (with an artistic twist) it clearly wants to be.