Other Spaces
United Visual Artists
The Store X 180 The Strand, WC2R 1EA 2 OCTOBER – 8 DECEMBER
Free
It has become a yearly tradition to go and visit 180 Strand’s yearly exhibition. It started monumentally strong, with The Infinite Mix, followed the following year with Love is the Message, the Message is Death, and last year with Everything at Once: Strange days, Memories of the Future. Each year, they got progressively worse – the first starting with a strong five stars, the last diminishing to two. This year, The Store at 180 Strand puts on a show by United Visual Artists: an immersive exploration of both space and time.
The first up is Barbican Curve’s show Our Time, a dance routine of light hanging from powerful pendulums, which swing and flow around the room with effortless elegance. It isn’t, however, until the lights glaring upwards come on that the show really begins. Suddenly you are rocking, swaying two and fro as though you are on a ship in a storm – it’s a dizzy, mind-altering trick of light which shows you how powerful, overwhelming, yet weirdly relaxing standing in a dark room can really be. This ended up being my favourite work in the whole exhibition, so make sure you don’t rush through it just because it’s first (or even mistake it for a walkway and go straight through, as I saw some silly sods do).
Second is a laser show titled Vanishing Point. We had to queue a short five minutes and were then guided inside by an invigilator who told us specific spaces on the floor to sit – not for any special reason other than to maximise space in a pretty small room for the most viewers. Around 5 minutes of laser show ensued, before we were moved along. It was cool, I guess, with fabric breaking up the patterns into 4 stages. I left a little underwhelmed if honest, as whilst lasers are always fun, I’ve seen much hotter laser shows – even Kew at Christmas beat this by a country mile.
Lastly, is Bernie Krause’s Great Animal Orchestra: a multi-sensory exploration of light and sound, built predominantly from his archive of field recordings from the natural world. There are around 7 stages, each lasting around 12 minutes. You are transported from the jungle, to the ocean, to the desert – various locations around the world with a collection of animals so rich and diverse you’ll be laughing at their ridiculous names on screen, whilst also questioning whether or not they’re actually real. The sound is accompanied by a visual soundscape, making its way around you on a screen that engulfs half of the room. The space you sit is surrounded either side and in front with water pools, providing beautiful reflections and mirror images and transporting you further away from 180 Strand, and further into these vast and distant lands. Whilst you may at first be tempted to watch every moment – the real magic comes when you kick back on a bean bag and get a moment to close your eyes. On an unfortunately busy Sunday afternoon we were hurried on a few times, and decided that we’d had our fill after 3 soundscapes: starting with Ocean, and Ending with Dzanga-Sangha.
Other Spaces has some highs a lows. It is safe to say that I have never listened to any work of bioacoustics, or been to a dancing light show quite as impactful. The laser work is forgettable, and the exhibition on the whole could have been larger, but as a brief Sunday activity (the whole thing should take on average 45 mins, depending on how busy it is/dedicated you are) it is worth a visit. 180 Strand are still unable to top their best show from 5 years ago, but they just about keep me coming back in the hope they will for yet another year.
OVERALL RATING: ****
https://thevinylfactory.com/films/other-spaces-inside-the-immersive-world-of-united-visual-artists/
