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From: jane devers
Category: Art
Date: 02 February 2006
http://www.serpentinegallery.org/current.html
Acid show. I spoke to one of the pleasant humans being employed to sit round in a room pretending to be a security guard, asked her how much she was being paid, she was cagey and didn't tell me, too atomised I guess. Always interested to know how much exploitation goes on in these shows exposing the evils of modern life.
This is a maximum impact and beautifully cold set of one liners masquerading as facsimile objects of the dreary drudge of the poor, the immigrant, the welfare benefitter etc. Their precision is thrilling, from the wheelchair with a balloon attached to it (a little Little Britain though), to the airport luggage conveyor belt behind glass in a room with stairs whose bottom rungs have been smashed leading to an emergency exit going nowhere.
So they've turned the Serpentine, a place for ruddy cheeked families and elite jet setters with nice handbags, into a series of corridors leading to the places they hope they never end up. In the wintry park outside we gaze blankly at the Royal Park and wonder at these funhouse houses of horrors, which art here achieves brilliantly, and ask is this what all must be, just spectacle.
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