Fulham Town Hall opens its doors to the public in May 2021 for the first time in a decade. For Art in the Age of Now, LUAP is given an open brief and a former holding cell in the basement, using the building itself as the starting point for a new sculptural Installation.
Preparing the cell begins with clearing years of accumulated dirt. As LUAP sweeps away a thick layer of black residue, he realises much of it is carbon from traffic pollution drawn through the small window vents while the building has stood vacant.
The discovery becomes part of the work. Pollution from the city has quietly collected inside a closed room, leaving a physical trace of the years that have passed outside.
LUAP transforms the cell with an intense pink, spraying the walls, floor, vents, cables and light fittings. Recycled white paint is custom mixed for the space until, as LUAP puts it, “Nothing escaped the pink emulsion!”
At the centre, a Pink Bear Sculpture sits on an old-fashioned pink bicycle with a bucket of paint in the rear basket. The bicycle introduces movement into a room originally designed for confinement.
Alongside the sculptural Installation is LUAP’s 2020 Oil and Acrylic Painting Freedom, showing a girl with her bicycle and The Pink Bear. Cycling has long represented independence and freedom for LUAP, connecting the two works through the ability to move through the world under your own power.
In spring 2021, that idea feels particularly immediate. London is emerging from another winter of Covid-19 restrictions, making freedoms that previously felt ordinary newly noticeable. Inside a former holding cell, movement takes on both a physical and psychological significance.
The black carbon adds another dimension. The bicycle offers a form of movement without the exhaust emissions whose residue has accumulated throughout the room. Freedom, pollution and confinement therefore emerge from the site itself rather than being imposed as separate ideas.
Before the exhibition opens, LUAP also takes The Pink Bear through the empty Town Hall on the pink bicycle, creating Photography throughout rooms and corridors closed to the public for years. The building begins to move again shortly before people return to it.
Curated by Ben Moore of Art Below and co-presented by Lamington Group, Art in the Age of Now runs at Fulham Town Hall from 20 May to 20 June 2021.
Artists Exhibiting at Art in the Age of Now
Ben Moore, Joe Rush, Charlotte Colbert, Patrick Boyd, Ariadne Dane, Tim Gatenby, Eliot Haigh, Liam Hayhow, Ru KNox, Anna Kenneally, Thomas Lumley, Peter Mammes, Chris Moon, Jeff Robb, Ernesto Romano, Conrad Shawcross, James Vaulkhard, MC llamas curates, Art Wars, Stations of the Cross, One Small Step, Skip Gallery, Christabel Milbanke, Hoxton Gallery, Sam Haggerty, Liam Hayhow, Angry Dan, Don, Ben Eine, Kucy Flynn, FORCE, Paul Insect, LUAP, Jack Laver, Dot Masters, Gary Mansefeild, NERONE, REZ, SPORE, UNVRSL NMD, Matt Web, Mr Doodle, Nettie Wakefield, Kiera Bennett, Nancy Fouts
