Serpentine Gallery, London

Location: Hyde Park, London

This surprising find is found in the heart of Hyde Park, a faux classical building lies nestled amongst the trees of the park. The Serpentine gallery is aimed at providing free art exhibitions with an educational point of view.

Going inside, the first room opens up with a display of step ladders with various instruments stuck to them. Designed by a musician, it displays all the instruments that were used in the band.

Beyond that, there is a film theatre, showing a variety of different films, not very well known films and by independent producers. In particular, the film on was called Fulll Firearms, by Emily Wardell, and it was full of interesting and well-shot scenes, and a lot of emotion involved in each scene. Art was featured throughout in all its forms, from painting, to clothing, architecture, poetry, and song.

Moving through, the next large room featured a number of props, with a cage on one side, knots of cloth knotted round the bars with english and arabic writing on. On top of the cage were female cloth dolls, and below were a few cloth houses, words sewn on them spelling out 'Made in Egypt'.

A tent dominates the center of the room, with pictures of people, and arabic writings, all below the letters 'KFC', and in front of the tent was a cushioned mat with words written over it, and the author's signature in the corner, Khalil Gibran.

A table is at the far end of the room is a table with three television sets around it, each showing short films done by students and young filmmakers of No.w.here free cinema school. The first film was of scenes of Edgeware road, and of pieces of art around London, most of which featured a particular girl as if in a typical daily setting. The next features a man, covered in newspaper clipping, head to foot, walking around and greeting people on the street, shot in black and white, with a grainy old-style.

Last was of London street scenes, of the Edgeware road area, and slogans would appear up on the screen, in an almost mocking fashion, such as 'morality' and 'crime & punishment'. The film far more clearly shows the current issues of paranoia and terrorist threats in a mocking light, with words such as 'everyone is a terrorist' against a typical street market scene.

The rest of the room has a variety of wall mounted television screen, all showing other short films and documentaries on life in Egypt, highlighting the variety of issues that plague the country, or as a cultural setting. Amongst these are a set of five painting by Marwan Rechmaoui, paintings of street maps in various style, in a mock child-drawing fashion, with arabic writing for street names and locations.

Following this, the next room on the otherside of the building, starts with a poem called 'Maps, oh maps' by Etel Adnan, and the adjacent wall features lots of VHS cassette tapes stuck to the wall in ad hoc fashion, with the caption reading that they are all fragments of the film called 'the three disappearances of Soad Hosni'.

This leads to another large room, where the nearest display is a collage of photos, most of generic objects in London, with the middle set of photos showing different people in the background, and the foreground of a young person holding a hand-drawn placard with words describing the people in the background, such as 'tourist', 'travellers' and 'business talkers'. Next is a poster titled '/ Protocols for Poem Objects /', with a variety of categories below, and examples in poetry form for each. Next to this was a table with a number of books, collections of poetry by various authors.

The opposing wall features a large poster of text from the 'Bidoun library', and interspersed throughout are several books, stuck by their spines to the poster, pages opened out naturally.

Finally, at the end of the room was a projector displaying a short film of conflict and life in Egypt, in a mock-documentary form, using children as actors to show people and soldiers in states of travel, conflict, and burial. The aim of this, as explained by the caption was to challenge the social structure by its use of children to show some of the harsh realities of life in Egypt.

The final room, at the back of the building, has a few displays, first being a collage of photographs, stories and captions by CAMP, of various controversial publications in the history of Edgeware road. There were also two televisions of different short films, first was on the close of the last pub in Edgeware road, and some words displayed on the screen between scenes about why. The other showed an arabic comedy with subtitles.

This was a rare find, and worth going to see, not least because it costs nothing. It is within Hyde Park itself, and makes for an excellent diversion during a walk through the park, away from the busy streets of London itself. It is educational in its own way, showing facets of Egyptian life, conflict and culture, and the film theatre is an excellent place to spend some time watching thought provoking films.

Images courtesy of theWhatWhereWhen and the Serpentine Gallery websites.