Other Spaces is an intense, trippy new addition to the London art scene.
180 The Strand may look a fairly unassuming place from the outside, but they’ve hosted some mind-melting art installation in their time. Back in 2017, the building played host to Everything at Once, a hallucinatory experience we described as “like uploading yourself to the internet”. From October 2nd, the space will welcome Other Spaces, a trio of works by London art collective UVA – and blessedly, it’ll be completely free to attend.
See also: More incredible art exhibitions to catch in London this year.
A joint project between The Store X, The Vinyl Factory, and Paris’s Fondation Cartier Pour L’art Contemporain, Other Spaces relies heavily on light and sound installations to bewitch the observer. For instance, Vanishing Point makes extensive use of lasers (already badass, even before they’re appropriated for art projects) that project beams of light towards an invisible vanishing point. Inspired by Renaissance drawings, it plays with the concept of chiaroscuro in a thoroughly modern manner.
Other Spaces will also see the debut of The Great Animal Orchestra, a soundscape of animal recordings that has been captured by bioacoustician (yup, real job) Bernie Krause. Because simply listening to animal sounds isn’t all the engaging, UVA have whipped up some abstract landscapes of the natural world, jolting you into a colourful journey through nature.
Finally, Our Time brings a 2013 Barbican commission into a bigger, more impressive space. Kinetic light installations swing back and forth, in and out of time with newly composed music from Mira Calix, in yet another head-spinning art installation. It’s quite the hat-trick, isn’t it? Expect to find your consciousness altered when you stumble out of this one…
Find Other Spaces at 180 The Strand, WC2R 1EA, from October 2nd until December 8th. Entry is free.