The Metro

24th April 2008

The artists collectively known as A. Vermin have been meeting up regularly and have now added this exhibition to an environment already crammed with old photos and books.
We're greeted by a photograph of Jim Colquhoun, crouching naked next to one of our primitive ancestors, like some kind of weremonkey who's woken up in the zoo. Baldvin Ringsted has adjusted reality by coating a chair and some other items with shiny aluminium. Beneath the bar is a supine painted figure by Emmett Kierans (pictured). Some of the photos on the wall have been enhanced with golden birds by Grier Edmundson.
Taking a break, gentlemen can make use of Kevin Pollock's MDF urinal, a well-varnished nod to Marcel Duchamp. Additional disconcerting objects by Hrafnhildur Halldorsdottir and Stina Wirfelt litter the room. There are things to read and so much to discover. It's so well integrated into the surroundings that you begin to wonder if that elderly chap at the bar drinking Guiness is part of the work.
This exhibition has a dark, alcoholic tinge, like the thoughts and conversations that come with long nights of drinking, those times when you confront harsh realities through a hazy window - intense but blurry.

MARTIN VINCENT