I have long been an admirer of Lazarides Gallery in Fitzrovia, and its sister space, THE OUTSIDERS in Soho. There is a freshness and touch of daring in the way they show the often quirky work of young artists, and they are always prepared to go out on a limb.
A phone call from my friend Dominic Dowbekin alerted me to Lazarides' latest venture...BEDLAM! A hugely ambitious show which can safely be called "different", this is the third year that Steve Lazarides and his team have taken over the weird and wonderful Old Vic Tunnels, beneath Waterloo Station, and transformed them into something magical, mysterious and deeply disturbing.
BEDLAM is an art exhibition which takes its name from the infamous asylum, which was once located on the nearby site of The Imperial War Museum at Lambeth North. The Hospital was notorious for the brutal ill-treatment meted out to the mentally ill. In the 18th century it was considered a popular entertainment to go to the hospital to gawp at the lunatics. For a penny one could peer into their cells, and view a sort of "reality freakshow". It proved a very popular pastime in 18th and 19th Century London, to such an extent that in 1814 alone, there were 96,000 such visits.
Lazarides may not expect quite such a volume of traffic, even in Frieze Week, when the International Contemporary Art hordes descend on London, but the show is well worth a visit to SE1, and it won't even cost you the penny that our 18th Century ancestors paid for their thrill. Entry is free by simply booking online (http://www.lazaridesbedlam.com/).
Generously supported by HTC, a global leader in mobile innovation and design, BEDLAM features the work of over 30 artists from all over the world, including such well known names as Artists Anonymous and Antony Micallef. The multi-media extravagnaza showcases painting, scupture, sound works, installations and film.
While this well-selected, beautifully hung and exquisitely-lit show does not concentrate solely on work created by disturbed minds, the over-arching effect of the exhibition taken in it totality is both intriguing and deeply disturbing.
Using all the architectural tropes and anomalies that the 30,000 square feet of labyrinthine railway vaults offer, a visitor is taken on a fascinating odyssey of oddity, through many of the darker recesses of the human psyche. Part chamber of horrors, part bad trip, all the work on show deals in some way with perception, mind control and delirium.
In Doug Foster's installation Brainwasher one is strapped into a restraining interrogation chair and compelled to stare at a large scale hypnotic film of rushing film of water until one feels that one's very brain is being taken out and laundered. Apparently this very device was actually used by the CIA at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s.
Another state-controlled mind-altering device that has been pressed back into service is s spinning torture chamber. At first sight War Boutique's The Noosphere looks like an innocuous children's roundabout, but during Egyptian President Mubarak's regime, a victim was strapped into the device and spun clockwise for eight hours EVERY DAY FOR A YEAR, then spun anti-clockwise for the same amount of time the following year. Total disorientation gave way to insanity, if the victim's spirit wasn't broken first. Dominic climbed aboard for 2 minutes and looked distinctly queasy as he disembarked.
Not all the work is so grim, though. There is something meditative and soothing about taking your place on the wheel-shaped arrangement of beds in one chamber, and gazing up at the ceiling to watch Doug Foster's The Psychotron, a hypnotic but ravishingly beautiful kaleidoscopic projection of gold ink being injected into water, accompanied by the drone of Tibetan prayer-bowl music. Gazing up at this, one is mesmerized by both its simplicity and its complexity. At times it is a cathedral's cupola, at times a fabulous firework display.
Michael Najjar is interested in brainwaves, and in The Sublime Brain and The Nexus Project Part 1 he has mapped the brainwave activity that occurs during the course of a conversation between two individuals, whose glassy-eyed photographic portraits hand either side of the delicate cerebral mapping. It is both beguiling and beautiful
One of my favourite pieces in this varied, sometimes inevitably patchy exhibition, is Karim Zeriahen's filmed diptych Diana vs Pussy in which close up film of an elderly female dancer with an extraordinary face repeats a series of sentences, while on an opposite screen her full-length self plays menacingly with a gun. Simple, stark and strange.
BEDLAM is a wonderfully barmy and idiosyncratic show. The architecture and atmosphere of the building itself adds immeasurably to what is something of a Barnum and Bailey experience, and I would recommend this brave exhibition to anyone who has a taste for the bizarre and the beautiful. There is much to enjoy.
The show runs until October 21st and can be found at The Old Vic Tunnels,Station Approach Road,London SE1 8SW.
Richard Strange 2012