Review: Anthony McCall Exhibit at Ambika P3, University of Westminster 19/03/2011

I went to see McCall's display at Ambika P3 over the weekend.  I was intrigued as to what I would find.  All I knew was that McCall has been commissioned to create something for the olympics and down in the depths of Ambika I would see a little taste of what is to come.

McCall has created multiple solid light installations by casting beams of light through smoke.  This sounds impeccable simple, but the shafts of light created individual patterns, or shapes on the floor.  The shafts felt like walls, which even though you knew weren't solid, there was still a feeling of crossing an unknown boundary.

Ambika P3 has been transformed from a grotty basement space which feels too akin to a car park, into a seamless void.  In this impenetrable void, the light sculptures reach out to you.  They are technically and conceptually magnificent.  Sculptures appear out of thin air, not before has a sense of three-dimensionality been created out of nothingness.

However, when you look past the technical brilliance, you realise there is no substance to it.  The work is to be marvelled momentarily, like a firework or some other light display.  But, the work does not stay with you, it has no meaning or hold upon the viewer.

Anthony McCall 

Inside Ambika P3