We always enjoy the eccentric offerings offered up by the quirky Gasworks Gallery in Oval, and their current exhibition certainly doesn’t let us down. Previous shows have included a giant Styrofoam coffin, and another saw the space turned into a Hampstead Heath cruising area. The current show is called ‘throwers’ by Johannesburg based artist Noland Oswald Lewis and is an altogether more serious offering, but just as surreal.
In the first room we find a 3D printer furiously creating stones which appear to be large lumps of coal. When completed the stones are logged by Gasworks and either stored or put on display, creating what is called a ‘Black Earth Library’. The text on the walls place them as various rock samples extracted from settler communities in South Africa, Australia and the USA. As coal often turns into diamonds, to us it was redolent of how people have exploited indigenous lands for reasons of profit or settlement.
The second room is a bit more playful, and invert familiar representations of the globe. We encounter a globe next to a giant black planet which invites the viewer to consider all manner of interplanetary ideas. A meteor? A threat to white dominance? Along the long wall there is a vast mural (stick with us, people) which weaves together that represents a social history of ‘stones that move’ which includes data from near earth asteroids and their cosmic journey. Accompanying this is a playful archive of people throwing rocks. Hopefully the synthetic ones that won’t split your head open. A recurring theme throughout is that of a thrown rock, be it a giant rock in space headed to earth or the equally symbolic sight of a person throwing a stone in apartheid Soweto which threatens the established order.
Nolan Oswald Dennis – ‘throwers’ is on now until 22 June and is totally free. The gallery is only open towards the end of the week from 12 to 6 so over the bank holiday take a break and flex those brain muscles which have lied in repose for far too long. And you can be amogst the bewildered patrons below.
