Pope.L’s builds his final altar at the South London Gallery

Religious art is associated with churches, not hospitals. But, prayers are more frequently said in waiting rooms than within church walls. In Pope.L’s exhibition, “Hospital,” it’s not clear what a hospital is. We see disparate parts of a familiar reality, yet something is wrong. Bottles of alcohol drip down the wall, yet they are evenly spaced, like a stockpile of medicine in the backroom of an outpatient centre.

In the 21st century, hospitals are where we are born, and often where we die. Families gather around waiting to hear important news. They rely on secular priests in white coats who have the answers they want- when they don’t, they might try to find a new hospital with a different priest and a second opinion.

In the first gallery, we see an enormous wooden construct with several toilets hanging across it and issues of the Wall Street Journal strewn haphazardly. Everything is covered in flour. To me, it’s a visual pun. Pope.L was inspired by an ad he saw that suggested buying the Wall Street Journal- not reading it but simply buying it- would make you rich. In this room, Pope.L tells you what he thinks a Wall Street journal is good for: crap. (Learn more about the initial work in 2000).

And yet in Pope.L’s original performance of the same piece, he suggests the way to get the Journal’s advantage is through eating it. It’s a strange ritual, one of pouring an excessive amount of ketchup onto long strips of paper and consuming it for hours on end. It’s all a bit silly. And yet, is the man who buys the journal everyday not to read it but to display it on his desk, engaged in a ritual any less silly?

Ritual seems foreign in the 21st century. But Like Pope.L, I grew up in the church. Communion makes sense to me. Communion means taking the same meal as your sister and remembering your blessings come from God. I wonder about the man buying the Wall Street Journal- where do his blessings come from?

All buildings eventually collapse- churches, hospitals, government buildings, even the corporate offices of Wall Street. Pope.L reminds us of this in the fourth gallery as a flock of animals destroy the Capitol building, and as gravity pulls all the features in his galleries in a downward direction. But when things collapse, what religion are we left with? What will we make of the things that have fallen, been covered in flour, thrown against the wall? Is there still meaning to ritualistically buying the Wall Street Journal when it's unreadable? How do we find meaning when all the altars we create eventually get destroyed?

So we return to the hospital, where many of us may end up looking for meaning at the end of our lives. We build altars of capitalism, of nationalism, of health and of spirituality but much of what we built our life upon will crumble.

Pope.L died in October, before “Hospital” had run its course. We don’t know how he died, but perhaps this work was his final altar building, knowing that the end is in sight.

N.B. Pope.L.’s exhibit at the South London Gallery finished on 11 February, 2024, but you can learn more about his work by watching this video.