TINA: Conceived by Olivia Plender. Petra Bauer, Pablo Bronstein, Melanie Gilligan, Goldin+Senneby, Anja Kirschner, Ciprian Muresan, Olivia Plender 

Pablo Bronstein, Canary Wharf, 2007 ink on paper 26.8 x 23 cm

This exhibition brings together an international group of artists who make work across a range of media including drawing, film, performance, sculpture and installation. The works in the show use a historical perspective to address issues ranging from the social effects of the collapse of communism and the troubled relationship between capitalism and ideas of liberty, to the strategies of withdrawal and secrecy used by off-shore companies, fictitious capital, and the ubiquitous use of Post-Modern architecture to manipulate a sense of scale and history in post-Thatcher Britain.

In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher made the notorious neo-liberal statement 'there is no alternative' (TINA for short), meaning that global free market capitalism is the only tenable economic theory. Subsequent decades have seen the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and increasing globalization, giving her followers cause for celebration. Meanwhile in the UK the re-structuring of the economy under both the former Conservative and New Labour governments, including the deregulation of the financial markets, has significantly led to the financial services becoming one of the main British industries. This exhibition uses drawing, installation, video, performance and debate to examine the ramifications of these developments.