WORTHLESS!

A crowd of the youngest and trendiest gallery-hoppers recently descended on Seven Dials to celebrate the opening of Worthless!, London's latest pop-up shop and gallery space.

Pollocks, a creative agency led by 19-year-old Josef Valentino, has designed an empty shop on Endell Street in the style of Woolworths, a high-street victim of the recession. Famed for its red signage and pick’n’mix sweets collection, Woolworths closed the last of its 800-plus stores for good in January. The empty husks of these businesses are now scattered across the country, a ubiquitous sign of the recession in Britain.

In a fun bid to “explore the concept that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure”, the "Worthless!" folks have invited the public to bring in to the store their unwanted possessions (until May 29th). Resident artists, toiling in the shop's basement (and rumoured to include some big names), will then transform these objects into a work of art, to be exhibited from June 1st to 5th. Several of the best items will be auctioned off for charity.

Here at the London offices of Intelligent Life, we gamely contributed a forlorn, five-sided Perspex box, which we hope will be magnificently transformed from "worthless to priceless”. Our fingers are crossed.

Worthless, 37 Endell Street, Seven Dials, London WC2H 9EE, until June 5th

~ CAROLINE CARTER