As an endeavour this annual sculpture park gets ever more ambitious and international. But, as a show, it hasn’t yet hit its stride. The fifth edition boasts Berliners, New Yorkers as well as a successful Romanian by the name of Mircea Cantor. The latter’s giant neon lettering ‘More Cheeks Than Slaps’ now reads, post-riots, more as prescient statement about the damage self-inflicted on this community than it does a quasi-religious parable about a smitten cheek. This global reach – orchestrated by enterprising young South London curator, Hannah Barry, alongside various selectors – is certainly impressive, if somewhat undermined by Jess Flood-Paddock’s mirthful recreation of Del Boy Trotter’s three-wheeler, which is titled, naturellement, ‘New York-Paris-Peckham’.
An Eva Berendes screen, a set of battered street bollards by Bettina Pousttchi and a pair of guardian rat inflatables by the Bruce High Quality Foundation all cleverly corral the crowds upwards to the roof (while speaking of the relative, um, high quality of works on display). Yet many are misplaced. The rats are actually about striking union members in New York. While a spinning handlebar, taken from a Lidl shopping trolley by Kitty Kraus (although novel in its kinetic fury) was difficult to see in the Stygian gloom and near scalped a fellow art critic on the opening night (no names). Perhaps the real issue is with a wider invisibility because everyone seems to be in such a hurry to get past the art, for the sunset views and rooftop bar. The infrastructure is key to ‘Bold Tendencies’ being such an unlikely success, but you can’t help feeling – to paraphrase Saatchi & Saatchi’s ill-judged ad-campaign for the V&A – it’s still just an ace caff with a nice exhibition attached.