Virgin spoil-sports — TAA exhibition obstructed

19.05.2007
The Tem­po­rary Autonomous Art event tak­ing place in a squat­ted venue once used by Reuters was today obstruct­ed by a pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm appar­entl­ty employed by the Vir­gin Media Group who alleged­ly own the build­ing which has been left emp­ty for sev­er­al years until occu­pied by the TAA ear­li­er in the week.

Today was the last day of the exhi­bi­tion which opened on the 16th May and involves the work of over a dozen artists from around the coun­try. The secu­ri­ty were assault­ing peo­ple attempt­ing to enter the site and the police were called. Over the course of sev­er­al hours the police attempt­ed to fig­ure out where the law stood on hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards obstruct­ing the pub­lic foot­path in order to pre­vent peo­ple from enter­ing a build­ing which was law­ful­ly occu­pied by some­one oth­er than the own­er instruct­ing the secu­ri­ty firm.

While the first police to turn up instruct­ed that it was a civ­il mater until the point of assault or obstruc­tion, the secu­ri­ty con­tin­ued as before as soon as the police left. The sec­ond set of police to arrive took a more prag­mat­ic approach. They said they’d do noth­ing until giv­en advice from high­er up and while they were there the secu­ri­ty were forced to step back from pulling peo­ple off the fences when they climbed over.

Mean­while, inside, kids played on a boun­cy cas­tle in the sun­shine and peo­ple wan­dered around look­ing at the wide vari­ety of art dec­o­rat­ing the large com­mer­cial build­ing. Work­shops were also tak­ing place around the build­ing and there was a sched­ule of films and exper­i­men­tal per­for­mances.

Short­ly before I left, high­er rank­ing police had arrived and were express­ing con­cern that they would be an unli­censed rave tak­ing place in the build­ing that evening as that’s what they were being told by the secu­ri­ty firm. The police asked if they could have a look around but after a peri­od of dis­cus­sion those inside said no.

As I left at around 6pm, the sit­u­a­tion remained that peo­ple want­i­ng to enter the prop­er­ty had to climb over a lad­der tied to the fence and could do so with­out obstruc­tion from either secu­ri­ty or police. It was not clear what would hap­pen next but the exhi­bi­tion is well worth a vis­it.

See also http://www.taaexhibitions.org/ and http://www.randomartists.org/

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Sat­ur­day 19th May 9pm

Has Lon­don gone anti-arts and cul­ture?
The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police have today launched a major oper­a­tion, which includes the cor­don­ing of two pub­lic roads and involv­ing the use of a con­sid­er­able num­ber of police offi­cers and vehi­cles. Result­ing in a stand off last­ing over 12 hours so far, (at 8pm), the police oper­a­tion has man­aged to pre­vent any­one enter­ing on the last day of a high­ly suc­cess­ful and inspi­ra­tional art exhi­bi­tion.

Yes, read that again … an Art Exhi­bi­tion …

Launched on Wednes­day the Tem­po­rary Autonomous Art exhi­bi­tion has attract­ed a large num­ber of tal­ent­ed artists from all over Britain and Europe to pro­duce one of the most excit­ing and inno­v­a­tive exhi­bi­tions that Lon­don has seen, achiev­ing almost unan­i­mous acclaim from every­one who has vis­it­ed.

Run­ning for four days from mid­day to mid­night one would have thought that such a qual­i­ty mul­ti­cul­tur­al event would be cel­e­brat­ed by the author­i­ties, but no, they insist that the place is going to turn in to some kind of rave and used it as an excuse to pre­vent the law­ful access to local pub­lic high­ways and the build­ing itself.

The build­ing is full of high qual­i­ty art, pro­duced by ded­i­cat­ed artists and the very con­cept of a rave is enough to hor­ri­fy any­one involved. The very thought of hun­dreds of works of art trashed in an ille­gal rave in incom­pre­hen­si­ble, so the ques­tion must arise as to why?

Has the Met lost it’s sens­es? On a Sat­ur­day night when the under­staffed, over­stretched police force is hav­ing it’s busiest night of the week they are sent out in force to pre­vent an art exhi­bi­tion!

Tem­po­rary Autonomous Art is (was) being held at 15–25 New North Road, Lon­don (Nr Old St) and is appar­ent­ly the most dan­ger­ous event in town

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