This month in Artvehicle we have a review of Babylon: Myth and Reality at the British Museum, postcards from the 2nd Singapore Biennale and Cambodia, an Aside on Dentistry.
Also definitely worth a visit is DIVING FOR PEARLS (in your own soup) - a group show across five shops on New Quebec Street, on until 14 November. The show brings together the collective of artists from Munich and London for the first time in London as part of and an ongoing collaborative, non-commercial project. Each artist has their own space- either the ground floor or basement of a series of empty shop units on the road and as such the exhibition operates as a series of solo presentations of recent work rather than a curatorial project which seeks to tie the works together through theme or tendencies, see divingforpearls.org.uk for details.
Elsewhere, 79a Brick Lane, the former home of Martin Creed, has been opened up as a new project space by the artist and David Southard. Over the next week (8 - 14 December), a series of film shows will take place daily. The shows are seven solo shows, whereby each artist has chosen a feature film, the visuals of which will be projected in the main room, while the audio soundtrack will be played separately in a second room. Each artist will show their own work alongside. Each exhibition starts at 8pm and ends when the film ends, see pagesofexhibitions.net/filmshows.html
The currently space-less Showroom is continuing its ad hoc presentations with Curating Architecture (20 November - 14 December ) a series of commissions by AMO/Rem Koolhaas & Reinier de Graaf, Angela Ferreira, Nikolaus Hirsch & Philipp Misselwitz and Walid Raad. Each focuses on the relationship between architecture as an increasingly influential aesthetic practice and the complex claims made on the productions of space. Each commission, once installed, will remain in situ so that the research will accumulate across the month of the exhibition. For further details visit theshowroom.org.
The Whitechapel Gallery continues its off-site project, The Street with the launch on 11 December of a project by Henry VIII's Wives. The group will use the Galleries Shop on Toynbee Street as a continuation of their project focusing on the building of Tatlin's Tower, in small parts, around the world. See, whitechapel.org for more details
Elsewhere, Charing Cross station has a display of Art on the Underground's latest project, Mystery Train, a project which encourages people with learning difficulties to use public transport to discover contemporary art galleries. Over six months, Jessica Voorsanger and students from Westminster charity Pursuing Independent Paths have worked together to demystify transport through a series of trips and games, using costumes and karaoke. They have visited galleries and museums in the city and toured 'behind the scenes' with the staff at Charing Cross Underground station. As part of the project, Voorsanger and the students have developed a series of posters with London Underground staff at Charing Cross. Based on the game 'Heads, Bodies and Legs', the posters present different sections of each participant's photographic portrait mixed together to form a new set of composite figures, each dressed in the London Underground uniform. They are on display at the station until March 2009, see tfl.gov.uk/art.
Rose Lejeune