It's not an easy experience, but Julia Bardsley's latest piece – the third part of The Divine Trilogy – couldn't be more topical in its critique of capitalism and its apocalyptic scenario. With the audience cast as a congregation, we gather for the party at the end of the universe, an almost religious celebration inspired by the Book of Revelation.
Enter the space and you find a catwalk in the shape of a cross and four huge screens which over the next hour offer up signs and images of money and meat. A relentless soundtrack throbs in your head and worms its way into your brain. Dressed as a man with a phallus and a tail, swaggering across the catwalk with teeth of silver and hands with hooks, is Bardsley.
Roaring at us through a megaphone, she is like the bastard child of the monetarist Milton Friedman and a snake oil salesman. The image is both appalling and slightly seductive; at one point, I thought of a dodgy children's party conjuror and at another – when a briefcase was opened – I was irresistibly reminded of Noel Edmonds's Deal Or No Deal. However, no TV show would feature the plagues, who totter across the catwalk like ravaged supermodels sprouting terrible growths and red sores.
This hour demands a great deal from its audience and makes its point too repetitively to be gold standard. But it cleverly invokes the disease of our age and the way capitalism sees disaster and catastrophe as market opportunities and feeds on them like a ravenous animal falling on meat. Bankers should be forced to attend as a penance.
