Shunt Vaults - with the lights on.

Last night of Shunt, under London Bridge Station.

We are friends with quite a lot of the Shunt lot, largely through Hannah Ringham, who has performed with Old Man in his show ENGLAND for the past couple of years.

Shunt vaults, a mouldy, vaulted, rat infested (one suspects) uniquely london space underneath London Bridge station, was a piece of magic in the world, where all sorts of off the wall artists could show their stuff and have it seen by a youngish, clubbing-ish crowd on Friday and Saturday nights. Over the years, I have seen naked people served up as dinner, sound installations that made me want to scream in fright, heartbreakingly beautiful video, a circus of human animals, and performance work that has ranged from the truly awful to the utterly brilliant. All of this has been conducted in surely the friendliest, best natured environments you could find at gone midnight in the middle of an English city.

On Saturday 26 June, we saw a beautiful dance piece by Ivan Thorley called, heartbreakingly, Swan Song, and there was an eclectic exhibition by a variety of video, performance and installation work by artists from Europe and North America called Mart. A load of people of all different sizes and ages took off their clothes and made a heap of bodies in a woodland installation, and other people cut up words and made little collage poems. There was a funky set by adrummer and keyboard player who both wore scary bird masks and a thumping, glorious set by Superthriller, climaxing in their classic barnstormer ‘Super thriller/Motherfucker.’

Where else would you find all those young people drinking beer and looking at, discussing and partaking in art at 1am on a Sunday morning?

We left them at it at two. But not because we were old or anything.