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Balzac, when he moved into Les Jardins-which became one of his most famous residences-was in no position to furnish it the way he wanted as this was beyond his means. As always he was weighed down by unserviceable debts. A couple of rooms and hallways were entirely bare except for Balzac's charcoal inscriptions that read almost triumphantly, 'Here an Aubusson tapestry'; 'Here some doors in the Trianon style'; 'Here a ceiling painting by Eugene Delacroix'; and so on. These were wishes, but also ghosts of his mental projections.
In her installation, Magnetic Island, Jane Gallagher gave the spectator even fewer guides than Balzac did. Since it was about the ghosts of art in the gallery, there is no, there can be no, nor should there be an illustration accompanying this review. Magnetic Island was an exercise in what might be called pure conceptualism for it verged on being not there, preferring the immateriality of ideas over the materiality of objects. It was almost an exhibition about the absence of an exhibition but was far from being anti-art in intent.
More than an exhibition about a single exhibition, Magnetic Island was an exhibition about exhibitions. The two small spaces that until relatively recently comprised what was the Regent Street Gallery were, on the first lazy viewing, bare. Closer inspection revealed a galaxy of small, penciled crosses. They were everywhere and did not seem to conform to any code or pattern. Like the experience of pure conceptualism, one's sensory pleasure in viewing waned-or was never there from the start. The exhibition was about all the remnants of all the exhibitions in the space hereto. By drawing attention to what was left of