Piccadilly Community Centre is a sardonic take on the motivations behind the Big Society - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Piccadilly Community Centre is a sardonic take on the motivations behind the Big Society

Critic Rating
Reader Rating 0

On the site of a former bank in Piccadilly designed by Edwin Lutyens, a pop-up community centre has sprung from nowhere.

It houses a money-lending booth, a prayer room, a canteen, a bar, and a charity shop with a Conservative Party desk, among much else. Daily activities at the centre include hula hooping and fencing for pensioners.

The sheer absurdity of this latter activity suggests all is not what it seems: the centre is in fact an immaculately detailed installation by Swiss provocateur Christoph Büchel, who has transformed the Hauser & Wirth gallery's HQ.

Büchel's fictional world gets stranger the more you explore. The basement houses a caretaker's office leading to a bed surrounded by porn and used tissues. In the attic is a squatters' lair, with daytime TV crackling away amid dirty beds and placards from anti-government demonstrations. The Zumba dancers I witnessed seemed to be authentic, and genuinely enjoying themselves, oblivious to participating in Büchel's elaborate mise en scène.

But the joke is not on them. In using a former bank, with a permanently empty money-lending desk at its front, Büchel's work is not a satire on community itself but a sardonic take on the motivations behind the Big Society.

Until July 30 (020 7255 9855, piccadillycommunitycentre.org)

Piccadilly Community Centre
Hauser & Wirth
W1

Comments

Don't Miss
Oh Delilah: Introducing London's hottest pop singer

Oh Delilah

Introducing London's hottest pop singer
Cool Kate at Claridges

Classy Kate

Kate Moss dazzles at Claridges party
The best cameras and accessories on the market

Snap these up

The best cameras and accessories
Amy Childs bares all like Britney

Dare to bare

Amy Childs vajazzles like Britney
Sneak peek at new Thames cable car

Sneak peek

First look at the Thames cable car
The bottom line: the rise of BDSM in London

The bottom line

The rise of BDSM in London
The Scissor Sisters are back ... and sharper than ever

Scissor Sisters

Back and sharper than ever
The Dictator - review

The Dictator

Monstrous and monstrously funny
Revealed: The secret Twitter stars getting themselves into a web of mischief

Tweet T'who?

The secret stars of Twitter
First view from the top of the Orbit Tower on London Olympic site

Orbit Tower

First views from the top