Looking back

Some things we just can’t get out of our heads. Like pop tunes, objects often trigger memories of times and places. Artefacts of an era, personal or cultural, become loaded with significance. It’s a pretty esoteric process, as other people may or may not share those associations, but it’s one that Andrew Renton aims to explore. The curator has chosen diverse work by 11 artists ‘to connote feelings of nostalgia’ at the South London Gallery. Maarten Baas (ex-Design Academy Eindhoven) makes a burnt offering to Ettore Sottsass, with a piece from his celebrated Smoke series of scorched furniture. Other exhibits are also haunted by previous lives. Spartacus Chetwynd’s latex leviathan echoes Hokusai’s Octapai, Martin Boyce’s sculptures recall abstracted phone booths and Ann Veronica Janssens’ surprisingly beautiful PVC canopy was used to lift spirits above a hospital bed. How we code our remembrance is the subject of de Rijke/de Rooij’s Bouquet II, which apparently tells a news story with flowers (tabloid hacks will love that), while Abraham Cruzvillegas has asked students to donate items they are indifferent about, from which he will construct a hanging mobile. I hope someone suggests ringtones – the show’s title references a Kylie Minogue song.

Stay Forever and Ever and Ever runs until 24 June at the South London Gallery, 65 Peckham Road, London SE5