A spaceship arrives in North America with aliens who know nothing of Earth and the people there. What do they find?   Today, in October 2016, they find people searching for a potential leader for the next four years, but the two potential candidates are fighting each other and discussing all sorts of issues apart from those that matter for the future of the world in which they live.   The aliens find this strange – their leaders focus on power and politics, not on sexual innuendos or on lost emails.  They wonder what sort of planet they have come to and wonder whether they should leave it and go and search for somewhere more sensible elsewhere.

Suddenly, ahead, a monument appears which confirms the true power of North America.  On a plinth, a sculpture rises up, almost entirely of metal, some painted and some rusting, some circular and some pointed, some twisted and some straight, with the addition of a glass and rubber tyres.  The monument is a pick-up truck, the symbol of modern America, a gas-guzzling vehicle that has been taken apart and reassembled as a monument for the 21t century by the American artist Virginia Overton.

At the White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey. Overton shows her dexterity.  Autumn is coming; so in one gallery she has a log-stove burning, the crackling fire fuelled from a huge pile of logs (where on earth do they come from in the middle of London?), while adjacent are mirrored sculptures – the glass mirrors being both reflective and translucent, taken from a library in Columbus Ohio, held on marble supports, reflecting back the 1970’s green wallpaper from her own kitchen.

Overton takes different elements and combines them into new experiences, with which she draws in the viewer to interact and question perceptions of space, culture and the modern world.