Dollop has acquired a bit of a rep for serving up fresh music for the faces of kids in both London and Nottingham. The night has hosted everyone from Uffie & Feadz, to Sinden, to Friendly Fires, to Mystery Jets. So we thought 'why not send one of the best club nights around to review some of the best art that London has to offer.' That's what we thought. First point of call was the Nosce Te Ipsum exhibition at the The Old Truman Brewery.

It was throwing it down outside and the last thing I felt like doing was leaving the comfort of my warm flat and facing the dismal journey to the Old Truman Brewery. However, it was host to the Nosce Te Ipsum exhibition curated by the enigmatic Lorraine Clarke. The exhibition was supposed to be a hybrid mix of installations, soundscapes, mixed media works, video, performance, mime and animation - exploring the link between magic, medicine and religion. That was enough to get me on my feet and out the door, though nothing could have prepared me for the world that I was about to be sucked into…

On entering I was instantly attracted to the tarot reader, hunched up in the far left-hand corner of the vast space. She appeared to emit some sort of mystical aura and I couldn't help but go over to get a closer look.  However, stopping me in my stride was a performance by Gedvile Bunikyte or should I say 'Pill Poppins’ and the walking Ouija board.

Pill Poppins

Branded from head to toe (Coke t-shirt, Nike trainers, Virgin Active umbrella and Tesco plastic bag), this confused young girl jerked around to circus music. She picked up a megaphone and demanded if anyone in the audience was “perfectly perfect in every way.” When she began measuring people’s proportions and telling them how they could improve, I slipped away quietly.

The tarot reader who suffocated my mind

I finally made it over to the mystical looking lady and took a seat at her table. Where had I come to? What was this mist that had seeped into and suffocated my psyche, making it impossible to decipher what was art and what wasn't? The ambiguity between the two was spiralling out of control.

Lorraine Clarke

Clarke wanted the exhibition to be directed by the subconscious; for it to live and breathe; for it to spread in any and every direction. The exhibition had no boundaries, no preconceived ideas of an end result. At one point an over excited punter knocked over a glass of red wine. But the line between art and life had become so blurred that no one was sure whether or not the wine might in fact be blood from the sacrificial ceremony that had occurred earlier in the performance.

Had I been cursed? Everything had become art for me. In one corner of the room people were huddled around a Ouija board, not far from that an old woman stood there looking dead ahead making strange noises and beside her was a young girl manically snapping twigs. I escaped to the toilet to collect my thoughts, but even there I spent ten minutes staring at an un-flushed sanitary towel in the bowl, trying to determine whether or not it had been place there on purpose by some perverse artist.

No one helped this woman to her feet . They thought it was art. It  turned out to be epilepsy

Did the tarot reader hold some mystical power? Was there more to my meeting with her than that which had met the eye? My only concern now was how to escape from this newly acquired ability to see art in the world. I grabbed my boyfriend. I just wanted to leave, to get out of the exhibition. The downpour had turned into a slight drizzle. Was the way the rain hit the ground art? Was the child bawling its little heart out a cry for attention, or just another improvisation? Even the dog shit smeared across the cobbled street… was that… art? Who knows?

For further details of the work included and upcoming events/exhibitions visit www.nosce-te-ipsum.co.uk, www.euroart.co.uk and Lorraine’s homepage, lorraineclarke.bulldoghome.com. 

Also be sure to keep on the pulse with dollop and what they have coming up at www.myspace.com/dolloplondon. Their next event is on 18 Jan at The Old Blue Last with a SHITDISCO dj set and some other very special live guests.