The Measures Taken

The ICA has always embodied nicely the radical pretensions of Britart. Its bookshops brim over with expensive tomes on the Spectacle, tucked in by the grotesque royalist triumphalism of The Mall. A rack of postcards with glib anti-Bush slogans, while at the back of the monthly catalogue, an advertisment for Private Hire- for 'product launches', 'receptions' and so forth, providing 'food as unique and happening as the ICA itself....a distinctive venue, contemporary meets classic'.

It is with this in mind that one should approach its allegedly radical content- as with Martha Rosler's 'London Garage Sale'. On tour since 1973, this consists of essentially sticking a junk market in an art gallery. And for all the Vaneigem quotes in the accompanying catalogue, it's as enjoyable and safe as a charity shop. There's huge piles of NME's from the late 90s, which I dare not look through for fear of an involuntary madeleine from a feature on Kenickie or Silver Sun. There's a Piano (sold) and some expensively priced jazz mags. The assistant tries to sell me a rather unsavoury looking cotton worm.

It all fits into something which has fascinated the alleged avant-garde since Andre Breton first found something vaguely phallic in a flea market- the shrapnel of history in the jumble sale, as opposed to the eternal present of the shopping centre and supermarket. This has always been fun- and going to a charity shop has always been a way of unlocking the secrets of a place's emotional and cultural subconscious: the objects left over from instant obsolescence. It does seem rather perverse though to claim for it any kind of power of resistance- magazines like Cheap Date have for years documented fashion's dalliance with the grubby, sullied, slightly lumpenproletarian world of charity shops. What it offers is a warmer, more personalised market, one that involves a flight from (hyper)reality- a refusal to confront or think about that other market.

While this little incursion of unashamed deitritus into the ICA is enjoyable (though the Open Arts Platform at the Seager Distillery in Deptford does this sort of thing much better, and with stalls selling grime mixtapes)- for instance I don't think I've ever concentrated so much on an exhibit there as much as I did on the boxes of records or the racks of jackets- it's all rather, well, petit-bourgeois.