Historic Fulham Town Hall will open its doors this month for the first time in a decade as it plays host to Art in the Age of Now, a group exhibition that brings together contemporary art, live music, talks and performance art. The 51,000 square foot building will be brought to life with over 100 artists for a free exhibition in support of London’s artistic community.

the vaults

A collective of some of the UK’s most successful and influential street artists including Angry Dan, Ben Eine, Catman, Lucie Flynn, FORCE, Paul Insect, LUAP, Jack Laver, Dotmasters, Gary Mansfield, NERONE, REZ, SPORE, Oliver Switch, Teach, UNVRSL NMD, Webbo, and Paul Don Smith have taken over the vaults in the building’s basement. The artists have spent the last two months covering the walls in the maze of former holding cells in the lower ground floor.

gaz mayall

Gaz Mayall has recreated Gaz’s Rock n Blues, complete with dance floor, where he is exhibiting imagery and memorabilia from the last 30 years of running the legendary Gaz’s Rock n Blues. With ska and reggae music playing periodically during the exhibition and artwork by artists including Elinor Fahrman and Natty Bo, Joe Rush, Gaz and Jason Mayall, the project pays tribute to one of London’s most colourful club nights.

mc llamas: the women’s rooms

Three dedicated spaces celebrating women in art will be curated by MC Llamas, featuring Holly Allan, Pauline Amos, Edie Baker, Kiera Bennett, Elodie Carrel, Arietta Chandris, Catherine Eldridge, Abigail Fallis, Nancy Fouts, Jessica St James, Chloe Karayiannis, Bip Ling, Jill Mandeng, Marion Mandeng, Sarah Maple, Savannah McMillan, Tuesday Riddell, Nettie Wakefield, Dana Berber, Anna Kenneally and Lily Lewis.

joe rush ‘theatre of waste’

Joe Rush, founder of the Mutoid Waste Company whose sculptures have helped shape Glastonbury down the years, is transforming the ballroom, complete with stage and sculptures recycled from salvaged material including F15 bombers and Soviet tanks.

Joe Rush’s ‘Theatre of Waste’ is the stage on which the dramas, tragedies, farces and ballets of the scrap pile’s imaginary world are played out using sound and lighting. It is in the scrap pile where Rush accidentally discovers his characters. Among these metal fragments, he recognizes the bodies and faces that have become the heroins and heroes of his ‘Theatre of Waste’.

These playlets (“Brothers in Arms”, “Joan (Jeanne)”, “The Little Dancer”, “L’Etoile”, “In Flanders Fields”, “… It tolls For Thee”, “The Last Ape” etc…), each staged in its own theatre, deal with themes such as war, friendship, love, dance, the Sixth mass extinction, but also boxing and the phantasmagorical worlds of the jungle and the deep sea. Rush’s surrealist and poetic works, at times tragic or comic, are the historical mirrors of a civilization which, by dint of over-consumption, is in danger of collapse. In the centre of the Ballroom, an empty fisherman’s boat, defying the laws of gravity, floats eternally above a pile of bones belonging to those who set sail to escape war, hunger and misery in plundered and ravaged countries. Those who left and never arrived.