Rowing, the gallery that this exhibition’s being held, is so close to my current flat that it is quite frankly embarrassing that I hadn’t heard of this exhibition until it was already in its final weeks.

However, like any gallery space that has Unit in its address, I was extremely excited to go and check it out, despite the blizzard like conditions.

The current exhibition in the main space is by artist Salvatore Arancio. It contains works ranging from sculpture to video and also features a curious little book with the title Wonders of the Volcano containing Arancio’s amazing eruption prints.

I was drawn into the space initially by the globular stalagmite-ish structures that had an iridescent glow to them and could have easily belonged in a seventies sci-fi blockbuster. In combination with Arancio’s appropriated Victorian geological prints and the dated animations in his video works the exhibition speaks to our constant reinterpretation of nature in our attempt to define and understand it. With mediums such as etching sometimes seeming as ancient as the rock formations that they depict here, it makes for a show that is as intriguing and baffling as those blobs that seemed to glow.

For any of you with an interest in those old encyclopaedic journals or in that pile of prints found in the back of junk shops, this exhibition elevates and reiterates both their importance and their defunctness – a reimagining of a reality through the blurring of fiction, history, science and art… or something like that.

Although this exhibition closes very very soon Arancio’s work will also feature in Hayward Gallery’s touring exhibition Curiosity: Art & The Pleasures of Knowing that stops off in Margate and Norwich here in the UK. More information on this exhibition can be found HERE. NB: Brian Dillon of Cabinet Magazine, who is just a wonderful man, curates it.

Finally, to keep tabs on what Rowing are doing click HERE. For example, it will be extremely interesting to see what Olivier Castel, the next in line to show in the main space, brings to Unit F, 449 Holloway Road.