One thing about London's art galleries - there are always more that you haven't visited. Or, in the case of the Pump House Gallery, haven't even heard of. Well I hadn't anyway, not until this weekend. I'd heard there was some impressively arty event going on outside the gallery, so I set off for Battersea on a very damp Sunday afternoon to try to find the place. What really, it's in the middle of Battersea Park, on the edge of the boating lake? That must be why I hadn't noticed it before. Cue the smoke.
Umbrella poised, I joined a crowd of South London arty types and intrigued passers-by in the courtyard outside the gallery. We were awaiting the scheduled performance of Landskip by Simon Patterson - a semi-choreographed pyrotechnic display (delayed somewhat while the artist demonstrated safety procedures to a group of dripping volunteers). The artwork involved setting off canisters of coloured smoke amongst the landscape, and was first performed atCompton Verney in 2000. Now Simon got to do something you'd normally get arrested for - setting off flares in a public park, for an hour, and flooding the place with smoke.
If you ever fancy recreating Landskip, the instructions seemed to go something like this. 1) Purchase approximately 50 coloured smoke grenades - preferably in purple, orange, yellow, red, green and blue. 2) Select parkland location (ideally near trees, footpaths and/or lakes). 3) Place each canister on cheap silver tray, of the type pound shops sell for sausage roll buffets. 4) On given signal, ignite canister to send plume of smoke billowing downwind. 5) Watch as the smoke swirls, and coils, and spreads, and flows, and dissipates. 6) Take photographs, because it's not every day you get to take photographs of coloured smoke in a park. 7) Attempt to sell your photographs for £120, because this is art. 8) Pick up spent cartridge using tongs and drop into bucket of water.
A crowd of 40 or so hardy spectators certainly enjoyed the spectacle, although not all of them stuck it out for the full hour. Occasionally the smoke billowed ominously towards us, rather like the special effects in a cheap horror film, and parents had to sweep up their beloved offspring from out of its foggy path. One woman had brought along a comedy greyhound, which insisted on bounding around through the mist and provided my very best photo of the afternoon (worth £120 of anyone's money I think). Simon's performance might have been lovelier in sunny weather, but somehow the grey overcast drizzle added a certain atmospheric gloom to the proceedings.
After the one-off event came an opportunity to look around Smoke - the main exhibition inside the Pump House Gallery. This may not look like a particularly big building, but there are four floors of galleries within and I bet they don't normally see quite so many visitors as crammed inside on Sunday afternoon. The exhibition has been curated by the folk at Implicasphere, who appear to have inhaled something creative, brainstormed the word "smoke" and then gone out and retrieved all the artefacts they scribbled down. A smoky tapestry, for example, or a 1950s smog cartoon, or a photograph of a spurting volcano. More obtuse items include a Smokey Mountain rabbit, some dolls-house-sized smoked salmon and a tobacco enema (honest). There are also several audio-visual displays, ranging from a smoking skinhead to a documentary about coal, plus a rather wonderful 15 minute video compilation of smoky-referenced snippets (ah, the Wicked Witch of the West, and lung cancer warnings, and Mary Poppins, and steam trains, and a Thunderbirds ignition). A right motley exhibition it is, with a genuine feeling of random ephemera.
You may be too late for Simon's outdoor wafting, but the gallery's Smoke can be viewed for free over the next two months. And I may find myself walking through the middle of Battersea Park a little more often in the future.
If you ever fancy recreating Landskip, the instructions seemed to go something like this.
After the one-off event came an opportunity to look around Smoke - the main exhibition inside the Pump House Gallery. This may not look like a particularly big building, but there are four floors of galleries within and I bet they don't normally see quite so many visitors as crammed inside on Sunday afternoon. The exhibition has been curated by the folk at Implicasphere, who appear to have inhaled something creative, brainstormed the word "smoke" and then gone out and retrieved all the artefacts they scribbled down. A smoky tapestry, for example, or a 1950s smog cartoon, or a photograph of a spurting volcano. More obtuse items include a Smokey Mountain rabbit, some dolls-house-sized smoked salmon and a tobacco enema (honest). There are also several audio-visual displays, ranging from a smoking skinhead to a documentary about coal, plus a rather wonderful 15 minute video compilation of smoky-referenced snippets (ah, the Wicked Witch of the West, and lung cancer warnings, and Mary Poppins, and steam trains, and a Thunderbirds ignition). A right motley exhibition it is, with a genuine feeling of random ephemera.
