Urban Nomads

South London Gallery, SE5, to 2 September 2001.

Goldsmiths’ curatorial creative design course has mounted a challenging exhibition in the South London Gallery, which confronts the predicament of the artist at sea in an ocean of materialism. In Moira Zoitl’s video piece, there is the interaction of a clearly heard track, projected onto the screen, together with that encountered via a headset, as pitched onto a television-monitoring screen. Everyday activity for a female in a German urban scene is recorded through two related modes as the realisation of some kind of mental map. ‘Mental maps are the means of psychological survival’ is the visual text message regularly spread across the screen.

Far from Germany, Zoe Walker’s Loch Lomondside origins are summoned up in ‘My Island Home’ – a kitsch mix of inflatable mountains and potted heather, expressing an ironic humour which draws on nostalgia to project despair. As with Zoitl, this artist also seems ultimately to be confronting and surviving (perhaps) metropolitan pressures.

In London’s tubeland, Nelly Agassi is videoed trying to solicit male rescue: they invariably do walk past the white-dressed nomad’s pleading message, ‘Excuse me, can you take me with you?’ This exhibition is a realistic evocation that seeks to encapsulate the essence of urban despair and survival.