Raven Row steadfastly refuse to put on a dull show. Their latest is no exception. The lower gallery houses a Öyvind Fahlström’s The Little General (Pinball Machine) – a 20ft raised pool containing a montage of images and signs with GI Joe doll, brain and foetus incased within perspex boxes beneath the water. Another blacked-out gallery displays Pierre Huyghe’s L’Expédition Scintillantes, a mesmerising light, smoke and music installation (think mini Torville & Dean/Pink Floyd stage show without skaters or band).
The Little General (Pinball Machine) –
Öyvind Fahlström
An ever-shifting montage of images and signs combining politicians and celebrities including Lyndon Johnson, Charles de Gaulle and Jackie Kennedy. Also naked pin-ups, dismembered penises, graphics, signs and slogans. Built 1967-68.
L’Expédition Scintillantes – Pierre Huyghe
Inspired by the memory of a Pink Floyd concert of the mid-70s.
House of Welfare – Rikke Luther
2013, Papier-mâché termite mound being slowly consumed from within by a culture of oyster mushrooms. “Produced in a bankrupt present, the ruin of the House of Welfare echoes a collapse that will have been; when everything is based on credit and financial speculation, the future melts into air”.
Lo Inadvertido – Marta Minujín
Lo Inadvertido was Latin America’s first psychedelic magazine, published in Buenos Aires during 1969. Minujín also imported hippie clothing, jewellery and posters from the US which were used as stock for a shop/exhibition developing into a commune.
David Medalla and The Exploding Galaxy
The Exploding Galaxy was a commune established by Medalla with Paul Keeler at 99 Balls Pond Rd in Dalston between 1967-9. They scavenged materials and improvised “explorations” across London, performing The Bird Ballet at the Roundhouse in 1967.
Reflections from Damaged Life – Dexter Sinister
The graphic design/publishing team of Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurst formed in New York, 2006. The slide projector was an important piece of equipment within psychedelic visual culture – used to display homemade “wetslides”.
World – Jordan Belson
A pioneer of abstract cinema. Visual director of the Vortex Concerts at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium 1957-59, his work influenced the later development of multi-projector light shows in the Bay Area and experimental film making of the 60s. His film “World” shows “the birth of a world depicted as a bio-astronomical event”
