Putting the "L" back into play

The irony of the faded "L" in this artwork - Play by Ulrik Weck - was not lost on some of us who attended a charity night at Play, a fringe off-shoot exhibition from last month's Frieze art fair. Especially given the glut of gallery owners and dealers showing round potential buyers. The buyers seemed to avert their eyes from this piece near the entrance. Someone pop out for neon bulbs pronto!

Curated by East London gallery Paradise Row and Prakke Contemporary, Play features 50 works and performances scattered over four storeys in a disused Georgian mansion in Mayfair. And I must say I had the most fun I've had at an exhibition in ages which may explain why its run has been extended.

Billed as "a festival of fun", the exhibition is liberal in its approach to its theme. Rooms of random curiosities included Jake and Dinos Chapman's Fucking With Nature. Stuffed animals hump on either side of a mechanized see-saw as a wee mouse runs between the two. It's overlooked by another Chapman piece:

featuring Ronald McDonald of whom they are so fond and who has subversively featured in previous work. Then there is Conrad Shawcross' Axiom reminiscent of a child's playground:

I enjoyed the frivolous lamps with feet:

 and I reckon my driving instructor would love this one:

Douglas White's Moon Cabinet (using wax and pigment to create a luminous orb) would look amazing in my bedroom:

But it was the fun performances which make this exhibition so inventive. From the Fucked Off Frog standing by a paddling pool giving passers-by the Vs to the Word Orchestra on the stairs, conducted by artist Ian Giles, creating unexpected and sometimes profound sentences.

You'll see different performances, depending on when you go. I ended up playing in a tiny room filled with polystyrene balls (entered through a trap door in what was made to look like a bunk bed in an eerie children's bedroom).

Immersing yourself in tiny balls is a pleasant but odd sensation especially when the trap door shuts out the light. It was the float experience all over again (see earlier post about darkness).

When we came across a room full of feathers - part of a performance piece called Kinder Heaven - there was nothing for it but to dive in. Much fun was had until we could no longer breathe. We also paid for it later (my most expensive coat still looks like a half plucked chicken and my favourite black jeans could be ruined).

That might explain the shocked gaze of Trudie Styler on the arm of Guy Ritchie (random I know) as they caught sight of our haute couture be-feathered look when they swept past us into Ritchie's pub Punchbowl a few streets away. We were attempting to have a one-for-the-road Amaretto but it seemed there was no room at the celebrity inn. Styler looked extremely startled, her eyes as wide as a raver's and her mouth formed into a pouty "o" shape that for some reason made me want to pop in a golf ball sized polystyrene ball (can she blink I wonder?). But I digress. Back to the feather plucking....

Play runs until Friday 13th November.Contact the gallery for a viewing appointment.

Shapes in the sky

They're dramatic, colourful and make people smile. What's not to like about fireworks?

 

Especially when they light up the sky with funny shapes like a palm tree:

Or this flower:

I love them as they bring people together too. Having said that, I had two sets of friends on the common this evening and in true Pop Tart fashion, didn't manage to hook up with either because of the general pandemonium and lack of mobile network coverage.

More gratuitous pix:

Pink and gold are my favourites. I really fancy a mulled wine now...

The darkness

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light," said the blind and deaf American author Helen Keller and I think she was right...certainly as these autumnal days draw in and it's nearly dark by 4.30pm. Brrrr. I need all the friends I can get. 

So it happened that I trundled off with two such lovely persons to experience the relatively new steel chamber devoid of light in Tate Modern's turbine hall. The three of us held hands as we gingerly walked up the big wide ramp to be wrapped in a silent blanket of blackness with only a vague green hue from a faraway light. Even more scary than the dark unknown were the occasional ghostly figures looming into view and then just as suddenly vanishing again. Shuffling feet, giggles, the odd "where are you?" and yelps of surprise are all part of experiencing the huge 13m high x 30m long installation on stilts How It Is by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka.  

Being inside the black box is disturbing and nerve-jangling for the first couple of minutes. But then a strange thing happens. It's like someone found the dimmer switch and gradually turned the light up. After five minutes your eyes adjust so that you're confident taking big strides from one wall across to the other while circumnavigating everyone else. And when you reach the far material-clad wall and look back to the entrance it's almost sci-fi in a Close Encounters of the Third Kind shadowy way.

The serious message behind How It Is is its reference to the cattle trucks used by the Nazis to transport Jews to death camps. Balka explains this concept in The Times and how he wanted to create "a photographic black hole", the opposite of Olafur Eliasson's popular light sculpture The Weather Project shown in the turbine hall six years ago.

Yet for all that, the dark is fun and makes you briefly think in a different way. And I'll bet a frisky couple will chance their luck before April rolls round and it's dismantled. Whether they're caught and we get to hear about it remains to be seen (no pun intended).

Talking of thinking in a different way in the dark, I experienced my first float a few days ago. Lying in salt  water for an hour in a confined, coal-black room relaxes you, detoxifies you, makes you more creative etc. It was a belated birthday present so I went with an open mind. However, rational thoughts such as drowning in ten inches of water and running out of oxygen with no one to hear my last gasps kept bubbling to the surface.

Death by float seemed like a distinct possibility for at least quarter of an hour. I spent the remaining 45 minutes silently concentrating on the filmy aqueous sheet on which I was buoyed, trying not to succumb to any violent arm flailing that might hinder my chances of survival. So I was indeed reinvigorated by the time I left and grateful for the wondrous world in which I was still alive.

Might try that dine in the dark restaurant next. Unless I choke on an unidentified object, I should be safe.