HOSPITAL

Each mock-up here exists as its own re-enactment; very much in the realm of metaphor.

Installation view, Pope.L: Hospital, South London Gallery 2023, Photo: Andy Stagg

The Main Gallery at South London Gallery is painted a blush pink and occupied with a pile of planks amalgamated into rickety towers in gradual collapse. They are leaning against each other—relational balance is important—and at their extremities are nested: periodicals, fishing poles, clusters of dirt, porcelain hardware (toilets). The whole melancholy decor appears to have been sprayed, painted, or somehow coated in white. A flimsy white. And at a closer look the installation is possibly simply edging into dizzy sleep. A small glass bowl is afixed to one side of a wall, captioned: “Dust, sprinkle at will”.

Pope.L’s solo exhibition is distributed over seven galleries, plus an outside installation. Across the street, in the former Peckham Road Fire Station—the annexe—a small dark room is set with a grid like hang displaying framed letter drawings and empty frames, some facing us or towards the wall, it depends. This plunged-in-the-dark room is to be entered with a flashlight. The above ground floor galleries offer a view over Peckham Road, and harbour empty shelves, dripping bottles, wine, plastic props, carafes. Scattered, but carefully positioned. Another space, open, shields orange dried marigolds sprawled all over the floor. A video work documents free roaming poultry and baby goats mindlessly wrecking a small scale straw-like looking edifice, covered in seeds. It too, collapses.

In Pope.L’s own words: the material is performing. Watching holes and forgetfulness could hardly feel more mournful. The weight, as we meander at times drifting, split off, detached, in our own lives and from our own sound mind, is ill at ease. Awake yet out of it both. Our presence in this moment and the quality of our attention may as well be the star of the show. It reminded me of certain passages of Sartre’s La nausée.

Denial–the exposing of it, I think, is not so much about how hard one is trying not to see, rather how much we are able to become aware of the roving absurdities populating our singular experience. Each mock-up here exists as its own re-enactment; very much in the realm of metaphor. Noted another association with Goddard’s Vivre Sa Vie because of the stacking of acts throughout, the sequencing. It does take effort to make sense of the show as a whole. Monitoring iterations of neglect is hard-hitting.