Comic chops from the best

'I'm on a whisky diet - I've lost three days already.' Hardly laugh-out-loud stuff, but it's Doug Fishbone's favourite gag. The New York-born artist has plenty more where that came from, too - his Joke Master Jr talking machines, containing reams of one-liners, are dotted around the Hayward.

Opening three days after what has been dubbed the most depressing day of the year, Laughing In A Foreign Language offers welcome relief from the otherwise unremitting January gloom. It looks at how humour can be lost in translation, and features slapstick, irony, satire and visual gags by 30 artists from around the world.

Of course, gaps in translation can themselves be funny, and several artists draw inspiration from culture clash. But South African Candice Breitz's reflection on language barriers actually serves to reveal how similar we can all be.

A video showing five Japanese actors playing out a story, using only the limited words Breitz gleaned from her first trip to Japan, sparks flashes of recognition.

From chants of 'Zen, zen, zen, Yoko Ono', to an urgently delivered 'Miso miso', the utter silliness of what they're saying seems occasionally to catch up with them, as they dissolve in fits of giggles in a traditional tea room. Revealing a loss of control we can all identify with, their convulsions are among the funniest sights on show.

Unfortunately, video dominates the upper floor, its clashing soundtracks proving grating. In one room alone, competing noises include dialogue from a spoof African-American soap opera, a Japanese man pretending to be Osama bin Laden, tinny electro accompanying Chinese people busting some moves - in Cao Fei's Hip Hop Guangzhou - and the incessant meowing of a cat.

It doesn't encourage slow perusal. The medium perhaps most suited to universal humour - silent film - makes an appearance here, too.

One of the highlights is Israeli-born Guy Ben-Ner's example featuring the artist and his small son, with nods to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Other strong showings come from Cameroon's Barthélémy Toguo, who challenges airport security with objects such as a giant solid wooden hat, and the strange collective games of Nina Jan Beier and Marie Jan Lund (Denmark) - while David Shrigley, as usual, raises plenty of chuckles.

But for me, the stand-out work was tucked away in a half-lit stairwell. Bulgarian Nedko Solakov has covered the walls in tiny doodles that are both funny and incredibly moving. A bump of paint is identified as 'a small planet with no ambitions', and shadows cast on the walls are marked out as 'a spooky twilight' and 'a misty day'. If it doesn't make you laugh, it'll make you cry.