Whatever happened to edgy, mind-shifting art shows in raw, liminal London venues? They’re still out there, if you leave the comfort zone of galleries that tourists, collectors or art critics go to. One such show is Stage at SET Gallery, Woolwich, curated by Mengmeng Luo and Karl Xinghao Liang, who first collaborated only recently at XYL Museum of Modern Art in Chengdu, China.
SET Woolwich is in a humdrum Brutalist office block abandoned by tax and council workers. It’s come back to life since SET, a London organisation for cultural-social initiatives, brought artistic facilities, a café and a garden to it. The gallery space is a long stripped-back floor where the grid for a suspended ceiling indicates its previous office use. Accessing the exhibition may involve calling a number handwritten on the car park fence around the back.
But once upstairs, Stage takes you into an underground world of darkness, with something of a post-dystopian feel to it. Stark spotlights at oblique angles shine on widely separated sculptures, extending them into shadows. Fan Bangyu, has built precarious, chaotic sculptures from dissembled machines and musical instruments that are augmented with objects such as a toy rabbit, hair or boxing gloves. These works come the punky edge of art from found objects, and speak of displacement. Bangyu seems to conjure ghosts to reside in such assemblage of vestiges of what we make. Canadian artist Miya Kosowick contributes a work called False Ground of Interstice, lit by a gentler, warmer light, in which a bamboo structure blurs the distinction between inside and outside. Rippling circles of sand spread where the floor contacts with bamboo and also concrete bricks, as if the sand had a voice acknowledging a ruin.
The sculptures are just part of what is a multi-media show. Stage features films. The stand-out one is by Roman Sheppard Dawson, an extraordinary graceful exploration of vulnerability, movement and human interaction. The name ‘Stage’ relates to the performances staged as well as films in the gallery, and the gallery itself becomes a stage for the movement of the audience from one set-piece to the next. The opening night on 9th May was a banger. Fan Bangyu teamed up with Xixi Wang to kick it off with a mesmerising, experimental set of chill beats called Sine of Smoke, and it was followed by a diverse string of acts. Liangqi Yao and Xiao-Wan performed Tom Tom, an ambient percussion work that somehow connected perfectly with a film of a bleak metal staircase. Abbie Coombes delivered a personal and frank monologue from a loo seat. A Coltrane vibe inhabited the jazzy musical interaction between Jorge Jobim & Hamish Ford.
Even when no performance is underway, an aftermath of the audience’s presence seems to linger. There were people and their energies and emotions here. When they’re gone, what’s left is memory and stillness, and an echo of our animated world. Check Stage out while you can — it may well reset your mind.
Stage is at the SET Woolwich, Riverside House, Woolwich SE18 6BU until 30th May
