- Venue
- Ex-Iraqi Embassy
- Location
Da Gallery Invades and Occupies Ex-Iraqi Embassy
Da Gallery a group of artists who invade unused buildings and then turn it into a ‘gallery’ until the structures of control evict them. They are temporarily free from the controls of ownership and regulation.
Hotel Da was a maze. The lighting was low and electrical cables lay along the corridors. People wandered around disorientated, trying to find their way. The artists made environments were either, a nest (a hiding place), or an exaggeration of the underlying discomfort (denied horror) that is felt in this context due to the events in the real Iraq.
Eerie clarinet playing emanated from a room I never found (Jack Love) The band played behind sheet like shadow puppets, in a room with a cardboard city on the ceiling. James White’s room (113) contained a stuffed pigeon sitting on a skull; text stated OCCUPIED TERRITORY, a constantly flashing light that made me feel sick. Chris Barnes’ room (102) was a makeshift system, where water dripped onto a line of hot electrical irons, making a great hiss and a small cloud of steam. Steph Smith (110 + 109) made a secret place where people were safely surrounded by mattresses. I eventually found the secret passage to it behind a wall of doors that were no longer doors, crawled through the fence and the hole in the wall.
A large official looking man searches through various documents by torch light, ignoring the embassy visitors. He like the artists seemed to be searching for an answer that is tantalizingly close. Something was happening on the verge of order, never reaching complete chaos, but touching it occasionally. The man searching through the piles of papers was ‘bureaucracy’ and its logical was farcical.
An exciting exhibition which I won’t forget. Experience it before it is gone forever.
[Just discovered the Da Gallery were actually evicted the day after the private view the 20 July 2007]
