As soon as you enter the CCA’s foyer, the promised ‘sensory overload’ of Feral Kingdom begins, thanks to a great big mural by E*Rock and Zeloot. It is - and this is putting it as kindly as possible - not very good. Face after face is piled up in day-glo orange and biro blue, from freckled and fresh-faced school­boys to gummy aliens and most points in-between. The style is probably best described as tweenage exercise book doodle meets cack-handed graffiti, but this isn’t some ex­plor­a­tion or ap­pro­pri­a­tion of juvenile folk art, it is simply poor drawing, hoping des­per­ately to raise its game through over­whelm­ing re­pe­ti­tion.

Next comes a flurry of work by Zeloot and Jelle Crama. Crama is based in Antwerp, Zeloot in The Hague, and going by the selection of silk­screen posters and record sleeves tacked to a pillar here, both are designers of choice for their re­spect­ive cities’ cooler gig promoters and labels. Both lean heavily on 1960s, San Francisco-centred coun­ter­cul­tur­al psy­che­delia of the sort defined by American il­lus­trat­ors and artists like Rick Griffin and Stanley “Mouse” Miller, with nods to the un­der­ground comics movement. Their adoption of the old acid drenched standards - wavy female figures, vaguely sc­ato­lo­gic­al imagery - is tempered by a con­tem­por­ary il­lus­tra­tion style that will doubtless mark out the first decade of the 21st Century for future audiences as im­me­di­ately as the groovy hippie look works as a visual shorthand for the late ’60s, complete with angled geometric lettering that, being hastily hand-drawn, is granted a rather louche looseness. The pair have obviously done their homework, fully absorbing the style of their psy­che­del­ic forbears, but the hip new twist feels forced, unlike, in­ter­est­ingly, some of the wigged-out noise groups their poster works promote.

On to CCA 2, which houses work by Dr. Lakra, an artist and tattooist based in Xoaxaca, Mexico. He presents a huge mural, spanning the length of the gallery wall, and, like Zeloot and Jelle Crama, wears his in­flu­ences on his sleeve. Car­toon­ists the Hernandez Bros. loom large, and there are shades of Daniel Clowes, too, with a dash of Japanese Manga thrown in for good measure. Unlike his co-ex­hib­it­ors, Dr. Lakra’s work isn’t so much informed by other artists, instead he simply apes their style. The content, meanwhile, is a witless litany of sup­posedly shocking schlock imagery - orgasmic porn actresses brush up against glowering super-villains, and bewigged 18th Century judges chow down on a cooked human corpse, over­looked by an Eastern god. Of course, this might all be un­der­pin­ned by a raised eyebrow, but if Dr. Lakra’s joke is to present ham-fisted ren­der­ings of glib subject matter, it isn’t par­t­ic­u­larly funny. Nor are his drawings, which see him take images of dolly birds and pin-up girls from dubious magazines, adding in­con­gru­ous tattoos. It’s a step up from idly doodling glasses and mous­taches on magazine covers, I suppose, but only just. Other works return to the tired shock tactics and de­r­iv­at­ive drawing of the wall piece, with more pin-ups, drooling African artefacts, and tattoo-style pieces combining in a yawn of hoped-for con­tro­ver­sy.

After that, the mediocre work in CCA 3 comes as a relief. Baldvin Ringstead’s in­stal­l­a­tion features a working Theremin sur­roun­ded by paintings, mostly religious, in which every detail has been excised except for the figure’s hands. Do you see? Ringstead is matching an in­stru­ment that produces ethereal, other-worldly sounds when you wave your hands over it to images of ghostly hands suspended in the ether. Very clever. DJ and style mag fashion pho­to­graph­er­ Mathew Stone fares better in his col­l­ab­or­a­tion with per­for­m­ance artist The-O. On a large screen a male figure is projected reclining on the floor naked, in a vaguely Christ-like pose, and covered with glitter. After a time, the glitter slowly rushes upward, a downfall in reverse. It’s a lyrical, rather beautiful image, un­en­cum­ber­ed by much in the way of meaning.

Lastly, there’s Lolly Batty, whose sculp­tur­al work is peppered throug­hout the gallery. Her inclusion here is a bit of a mystery, lacking as it does the cod-psy­che­del­ic or vaguely un­der­ground sheen of the rest. Her pieces are also, sur­pris­ingly in this context, really rather good. Each is a prist­inely sym­met­ric­al form with a pristine white surface, and look like the physical man­i­fest­a­tions of arcane math­em­at­ic­al formulae, which, though they are la­bor­i­ously hand-crafted from poly­s­tyr­ene blocks, might have been made for an unknown purpose in some gleaming hi-tech factory.

That might sound like ad­mir­a­tion for a ‘real’ artist in the midst of disdain for designers, il­lus­trat­ors and tat­too­ists, but the problem with this exhibit is not the wide net it casts across artforms, the problem is the dismal quality of most of the work. In the end, it is puzzling how the show came to be. Did no one notice that the work being gathered together was so poor? Perhaps it is intended as a sort of insurance policy for the CCA: however flawed a future show might be, visitors will at least be able to say, ‘At least this isn’t as bad as Feral Kingdom’.

This review was first published in The Herald on October 8th, 2007.