Evening Standard (London): Snapshots show there's nowt so queer as folk art

EXHIBITION Folk Archive Barbican Curve

PHOTOGRAPHS from the World Gurning Championships, images of prettily decorated cakes, a customised motorcycle helmet, a floral memorial to a deceased smoker in the shape of a giant cigarette.

The Barbican's latest exhibition, Folk Archive, sounds whimsical, but it is the result of a deadly serious project, begun seven years ago by artists Alan Kane and Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller, to discover and record the essence of contemporary British folk art.

The show, mainly through photographs, pays tribute to the small, unassuming and organic passages of creativity that run through Britain.

Images of sound systems from the Notting Hill Carnival, shop signs, antiwar posters, cars with UV underlighting and graffiti sit alongside drawings by prisoners and mementos from traditional rural folk festivals, such as the Egremont Crab Fair in Cumbria, running since 1387 and proud host to the gurners, Ferret Roulette and Westmoreland Wrestling.

The creative efforts that Kane and Deller have selected, all by people who wouldn't consider themselves artists, are sometimes funny, sometimes moving and often rather ugly. But the subtext of the exhibition is that they represent a culture and attitude under threat.

Once all culture was like this, homemade and rooted in the local, unpretentious attempts to beautify or communicate something.

Now, in our increasingly commodified society, culture is only recognised as such if it is packaged and clearly labelled. So the idea that culture is something produced only by professionals and marketed by companies becomes a widespread unconscious assumption and some of the nuance and difference that brings interest to the world disappears.

Particularly poignant in this respect are the several trade- union banners included, with their proud, martial air and images of local leaders and landmarks. They already look like relics of a bygone age. Let us hope that does not also become true of the other exhibits.

. Until 24 July.

Information: 0845 1207550.