Vile Earth

The opening of Kyp Kyprianou and Simon Hollington's exhibition 'Goodbye Vile Earth' at South Hill Park, Bracknell, on Saturday. The show was the result of the artists' residency at the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust (FAST), which preserves and promotes the heritage of the Royal Aeronautical Engineering Workshops at Farnborough, the foremost location for British aviation research and development, the site of Arts Catalyst's 2004 International Artists Airshow, and now a business park.

The exhibition presents objects, photographs and films from the FAST archives, almost in the style of a small museum but deliciously twisting the idea of the museum and the dry presentation of carefully-selected facts, transforming it into a human tale with its foibles, contradictions and questionable truths. The objects - missiles, pressure suits, crash helmets, aviation paraphanalia - are appealing, but it's the stories that the artists unfold through photographs and texts along the gallery walls that held my complete attention. Here, in chronological order, are tales, snippets, insights and anecdotes from Farnborough's history of aircraft experimentation and war - recollections from FAST engineers (also told on a video in an adjacent gallery space), reflections from the artists' conversations at Farnborough, small anecdotes from the artists' own lives - juxtaposed with rare and fascinating photographs. "Drop that and you'd have to run to Reading" comments an engineer of the artists' request to include a nuclear device in the exhibition. Discretely interlaced with this unfolding story of aviation are quotes from artists of the time and postcard-sized pictures of artworks of the period. "Painters were always good at getting out of wars. It was the writers who went to the front" notes Kyprianou wryly.  (the show runs to 16 March)

Nicola Triscott, Director

Photo: Goodbye Vile Earth (installation shot) by Mattlox