At first sight, it looks like something has exploded in Santa's grotto. Every centimetre of the 400 square feet of wall space at the John Batten Gallery in Central has been adorned with small plastic toys and figurines, creating a cornucopia of colours and shapes. Battle-ready robots, World Wrestling Foundation wrestlers, superheroes, Disney characters and muppets peer out from a collection of cheaply made, mass-produced objects that have been attached with magnets to sheet-metal-covered walls for this installation-cum-photography exhibition. The photographs, placed at strategic intervals along each wall and looking like they might be overrun by encroaching toys at any moment, are haunting portraits of toy-factory workers in China, where 75 per cent of the world's toys are made.
In the middle of it all, like the Pied Piper of Toy Town, sits Hong Kong-based artist Michael Wolf. 'Everything we use is made by someone,' he says, 'and I think people tend to forget this. I wanted to say, 'Look, these things don't just appear and making them is a dull, repetitive job.' And to do that, I had to create this level of density with the toys.'
The idea for the installation began as a surprise for his six-year-old son, Jasper, when he bought a sack of 600 second-hand toys to spread across his room.
'The effect was stunning,' says Wolf. 'We looked carefully at the toys and discovered each one was made in China. Jasper said to me, 'I thought Santa Claus and his helpers made toys!' and it was then that the idea came to me.'
The result is striking: the portraits force the spectator to make the link between product and production, while the stark images of factory life sit uneasily with their gaily coloured neighbours.
'I very much wanted to do something that was entertaining,' he says. 'A lot of art can be very serious and highbrow, and if I'd only used the photographs, it would have been a very different exhibition. The added dimension of the toys lifts it to another sphere - people who don't normally go to galleries, I hope, will come because of the toys.'
Entertaining it most certainly is. Part of the attraction is spotting familiar faces and characters amid the montage, as well as the mini-narratives Wolf has woven into his work: a George W. Bush doll faces off to Saddam Hussein across the room; Barbies leap in procession pursued by eager Kens; sharks and whales try to turn Power Rangers into Jonahs.