Mark Hosking’s exhibition “Radio Mayday” offers DIY survival strategies for use in a global meltdown. Everyday accoutrements are reconfigured as emergency devices for male and female office workers. City River Fishing (stock exchange man 2) (all works 2003) is a crafty tool that comprises a shoe, mobile phone charger, a length of wire, mineral water bottle, and sharp hooks fashioned from keys. City River Fishing (stock exchange woman) uses a stiletto heel as a counterweight; a false fingernail, a tube of mascara, and a ribbon serve as bait. While the fishing tackle is at least utilitarian, Tie Fume/Germ Mask—a neatly folded striped silk tie that fastens to the face with a shoelace—provides a stylish but non-functioning alternative to a gas mask. Hosking’s sci-fi paraphernalia has an aesthetic refinement that the average urban dweller might not emulate when the hour of need arrives. But the work is easy to appreciate now as part of the tragicomic scenario of city slicker turned hunter-gatherer.
