Much ado about Nuffin

Encountering yet another painted slogan or tatty concrete mould by Bob and Roberta Smith does raise the inevitable question: just what is it that spurs this strange art duo on?

Bob and Roberta (aka Patrick Brill, the artist who has worked under this personae since the mid 1990s) typically make absurd pronouncements in colourful, often misspelt drop-shadowed text.

Here, they have been asked to respond to three medieval sculptures owned by medievalmodern, the gallery set up last year to show new works that 'stimulate a dialogue between medieval and modern art'.

This has resulted in a predictably motley collection of stuff: some scribbled verse; a couple of concrete moulds of swords; some penis-shaped wall hangings; a pair of concrete-filled slippers and a handbag; two painted signs proclaiming that 'Nuffin is Reel'(pictured) and 'New is the New Old'.

There's also a concrete mould of a lobster forming a centrepiece to a medieval banquet (though this seems inspired more by Dutch 17th-century still-life tableaux). All relate to another comic creation, The Uncommon King Of Leytonstone. Run by a Montenegran artist (Fedja Klikovac) and a dealer in medieval art (Marc du Ry), medievalmodern is a strange concept for a commercial gallery.

Not ones to take art history seriously, Bob and Roberta have, nonetheless, responded with appropriate comic insouciance. Indeed, one begins to have the niggling suspicion that the whole enterprise itself might be bit of a spoof. But I'm assured it isn't.