Pope.L: Hospital

With roots in philosophy and theatre, best known for his provocative performances and public installations, Pope.L’s career has since the seventies been centred around society, politics and contemporary culture. The works often reveal contradictory and provocative themes in language, gender, race, economics and community, exploring the systems, conflicts and beliefs essential to our society and culture. His wide range of practice spans across writing, painting, performance, installation, sculpture and video. Hospital is the artist's first solo exhibition in a London institution, and is to be explored across South London Gallery' Main Gallery and Fire Station.

Pope.L’s exhibition brings together a set of installations and interventions, all of which are reconfigurations of previous works. In the Main Gallery three large-scale wooden towers are in states of gradual collapse. Further installations across the four galleries in SLG’s Fire Station explore ideas of memory, decay, forgetfulness, convalescence or mourning. The artist describes them as “sites where personal and institutional metaphors of care metastasize into scenes of spills, shelves with holes, fallen towers, broken bottles, dripping liquids, always something ongoing, always something undone and wanting fixed with dust or stains or trampled flowers. Hospital is that sensation of lying on your back on a stretcher in a hallway staring at the veins in the ceiling above while it stares right back“.

Pope.L, 093, 22-23, ze/th, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Modern Art.

Pope.L, Litany, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Modern Art.

Pope.L, Small Cup, 2008, video with colour and sound, 12:52 minutes. Courtesy of the Artist. © Pope.L

Pope.L: Hospital is open at South London Gallery until 11th February 2024.