EU-loving art worlders had their legs emphatically stretched this weekend with Saturday’s (2 July) anti-Brexit march attracting a considerable and multigenerational posse from the capital’s visual arts contingent. Among the estimated 50,000 throng of protestors who paraded from Park Lane to Parliament Square were the eminent art historian Dawn Ades; the former Serpentine Gallery director Alastair Warman; the artists Anne Hardy, Charlotte Cullinan and Gavin Turk with his wife Deborah Curtis and their daughter Frankie.
Once everyone had marched the route and shouted themselves hoarse (with much boo-ing outside No 10 Downing Street) it was then time to hit the trail for Art Night. This all night art-fest, organised by the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Unlimited Productions, transformed ten locations throughout the City of Westminster with installations and performances from 5pm on Saturday until the wee small hours of Sunday. Some of the spaces are normally inaccessible, such as the disused Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross tube station which Korean artist Koo Jeong A had infused with beaming lights and the costly scent of the endangered Agar tree; or the shut-off rooms of Admiralty Arch, which had been anointed with squid ink and populated by bizarre guides, courtesy of the Turner Prize winning artist, Laure Prouvost. The Danish artist Nina Beier installed well-trained dogs and masked performers in a luxuriously generic show flat at 190 Strand. In the almost-refurbished brutalist building next door, which overlooks the Thames, Celia Hempton took advantage of the view (soon to be blotted out by another development) with her strikingly panoramic installation of paintings exploring the source of the river, including via the undulating bodies of her three river goddesses.
Art was also let loose in and around some of central London’s most iconic sites, but in such a way as to present them in a very different light. The 18th-century baroque gem of St Mary le Strand played host to the Californian Jennifer West’s projected film while the Duke of York Steps became the stage set for Linder’s full-blown extravaganza of tap dancing showgirls, singing choirs, posing model boys, Northern Soul and ballroom dancers, and performers dressed as rabbits wearing surgical masks. But the grand finale was provided by the magnificent Joan Jonas who collaborated with the jazz pianist Jason Moran to fill the gothic interior of Southwark Cathedral with a constantly-changing array of sounds, drawings and projected images as both a tribute and an elegy to the volatile flux and fragility of our world. A perfect end to a troubling but also stimulating day.
