Le Salon in le Play Ground

Play Ground
5th February – 8th May 2011
New Walk Museum & Art Gallery (in partnership with The City Gallery)
Cory Arcangel, Angela Bulloch, Marcel Duchamp, Hassan Hajjaj, Fischli and Weiss, Takashi Murata, Bob and Roberta Smith, Mungo Thomson, Erwin Wurm.

At an art gallery we usually have to follow a series of rules. Don’t touch the work, don’t run, don’t shout, don’t play. Don’t, in short, have fun. We thought it would be good to try something else – this exhibition shows contemporary artists that treat the gallery like a fairground rather than a church.

The exhibition features Hassan Hajjaj’s Le Salon, a Moroccan influenced café, American artist Mungo Thomson’s production of a large inflatable as an artwork. Angela Bulloch’s light installations that respond to the audience chanting football songs, amazing films of mechanical wonders by Fischli and Weiss and Erwin Wurm’s prints giving instructions on how to turn yourself into a sculpture for one minute.

So welcome to Play Ground, where we can touch the art (at least mostof it), where we can shout and sing and where you should have fun. In this exhibition the play is as important as the ideas it may stimulate.