I was just in Hoxton Square, while spending some time in London, and decided to go to the White Cube Gallery. I walked into the space, which I always find disappointingly small.
However this time the place was filled with beautiful chrome contemporary chandeliers, the space became enlivened. The show was called Island Universe, an installation consisting of five sculptures. You stood in the midst of these blasts of metal and lights. I can only describe them as spiky balls. However on investigation I found that I wasn’t far off. They are representations of both the big bang and a play on the chandeliers in New York’s Metropolitan Opera by the varying lengths of the rods are based on measurements of time, the clusters of glass discs and spheres accurately represent the clustering of galaxies in the universe, and the light bulbs mimic the brightest objects that exist, quasars. I was so excited that I had to read up about the original lights, created in 1965 were actually a gift from the Austrian government.

The use of the gallery I thought was really exciting, the light hovered in your space you inspected them as you would a globe, whilst you try to point the places that you would love to visit. These combined with the video upstairs created an extremely good combination. All the art was self-satisfactory as pieces, but you also got the bonus of an educational film that wasn’t setting itself out for the lowest common denominator. It was creative and exciting, it had no real plot but it didn’t matter I was enjoying the sparkly lights as they float from the ceiling. It kept me in the dark for at least half an hour. The video really gave another dimension to the whole experience. It demonstrated real sense of cohesion to the gallery.