Blood & Thunder

About

Bad boy Beckham has a lot to answer for. If only our ape-like ancestors could have seen the front pages of the Daily Mail when they picked up that first stick and pondered what to do with it. Well, there's no changing history. Here we are, and for a shot at unpicking the mess, Fold Gallery has moved location for its fifth show to the suburban heartlands of Ballard's Kingdom Come. Madness and transgression have been given a hose down and are up for sale - even death has taken on a rather glossy appeal... So, while the chest-thumping, rocks and raw violence seem all but extinct (forget the weekend in a local Wetherspoon's), a more threatening part of our culture (Richard & Judy) burns faster and more furious. This is probably something to do with why Tom Baker, Graeme Duddridge and Geraint Edwards make art. In fact, these artists are verging on being the bug-ridden automatons of our cultural machine. Their computers perpetually scan the offerings of Amazon - about to blow up, one hopes, under their own self-referential gaze but alas, not before they make a last death-throw for the objects' reinvention. Gucci belts and Prada bags are burned, smashed and defiled in adolescent rampages, and offered back with the gloss and sex with which they were found. Even a renaissance master or two take a cultural thrashing this time around. Come looking for a Vogue fashion-shoot dressed up as art - and the experience is more likely to feel like a pretty punch on the nose.