Concrete Playground

Firstdraft being all multi-chambered and exposed-concretey as it is, the art that goes on display there gets interesting inflections from the decor. Sometimes it's hard to predict how an artist's work will go in a particular space even when you've seen the art and the gallery before, but it nearly always bears consideration, and at the very least makes you look that much harder.

This time around there's vomit-pink imperial-style decadent portraiture, collaboratively inspired but individually made sculptures-cum-machines-cum-found-objects, digital images mimicking the physics of apparent chance shaping the impact of nature on objects, and an evolving sound-field derived from and created in homage to space travel and Stanley Kubrick. Look at them on their own, look at them in the space, look at them compared to one another, look at all four shows and how Firstdraft holds them and how they make it look. (There won't be a quiz.)

Image: Une Collection de Parties Décadents, Penelope Benton 2011