A lot of bottle but little art: Three clubs held launch parties last week. Emma Forrest picked the wrong one to visit

THERE IS a problem with the term 'art installation'. You install bathroom fittings, not art. But Start has seen fit to launch its new gallery with Absolut Mach, an installation of 10,000 Absolut Vodka bottles by the Scottish artist David Mach. Personally, if I were launching an art gallery, I would want an installation of Um Bongo cartons or Jim Jones Kool-Aid.

Start is the British wing of a transglobal arts centre that aims to provide studio, performance and exhibition space for artists. The concept, according to the PR company, is 'to invoke a total multi- cultural/sexual/feel-good environment as a reaction to the one-dimensional rave culture so prevalent in clubland'.

The first Start centre opened in Montreal recently. More are planned for Italy, New York, France and Spain. StART - geddit? Like, socially transmitted art. Coming soon to a city near you.

Last weekend Start held a launch party at the old Royal Mail Sorting Office in Southwark. I think they held the party to ransom because it never really turned up. It felt like one of those car journeys where you keep asking your dad if we're there yet before he's switched the engine on.

Start promised the party of the year, with guests of the paparazzi calibre of Robert DeNiro, Robin Williams and Francis Ford Coppola. I guess they wanted to watch reruns of Prisoner: Cell Block H instead.

Strange, when you consider what was on offer. A vast, cold warehouse full of empty vodka bottles and Swedish people (representatives of Absolut). Cool, I can't wait.

The frazzled PR tells me that the evening has been held up because the council is checking that the generators don't exceed noise limits. So I am left trying to work out how to mingle in a warehouse.

How do you not look like a sad person with no friends, when all you can look interested in is 10,000 bottles of vodka that you are not allowed to drink or touch; that you just have to look at? 'Sorry, I'm busy, I want to look at the installation again. Yep, it's still there.'

Basically, this is a bad night-club on a much larger scale.

Men who look like Hugh Grant gone wrong mouth 'oh rilly', at girls who look like Pam Hogg gone right. Help, I'm stuck in a Tama Janowitz novel. No, wait. A television adaptation of a Tama Janowitz novel.

Besides, there is something sinister about the launch of an art gallery being sponsored by a vodka company. International corporations stamp out individuality. For Christ's sake, vodka stamps out individuality and makes humanity a mass of puking deadheads. The bartenders try to convince you that it doesn't by mixing it with cranberry juice.

So I'm on my third vodka and cranberry and Robert DeNiro still hasn't turned up, but I'm hopeful.

A foul man sits next to me and I feign interest in a light bulb. 'I can't taste the vodka,' says the bouffanted woman sitting opposite. 'You never can,' replies her greasy companion. It seems a very apt comment.

For some reason there are a lot of art brats here - toddlers in Warhol print T-shirts. I consider spiking their cranberry juice, a la WC Fields.

Maybe this is supposed to be the theme of the launch: 'Die, yuppie scum'. Or else I'm turning into Bret Easton Ellis.

As I'm about to try to play 'My Sharona' by blowing into the bottles in the installation, I spy the artist Peter Blake. He has already contributed a piece to the project and has shown up to have a look around.

'It sounds like an interesting project. I don't quite understand it yet. It sounds like a good plan. And David Mach's always interesting. It's good to see what other people are doing.'

'It's appalling,' I opine. 'You're much better. I have your print of 'Morgan Le Faythful' on my wall.' And then I start trying to compare Marianne Faithfull to Karl Marx, and Peter Blake leaves very quickly.

I have driven out the only person worth interviewing, so I have to interview a small child who says that he'd either like to be an artist or a police (sic).

The sound system is switched on. A free-form soul band starts up and well groomed men in business suits Start to look nervous.

Guess what? Robert De- effing-Niro hasn't arrived. The vodka has run out and people are getting restless.

It's a bit like the Women's Party - Start has the best intentions but the reality is bound to be a letdown. On the strength of the launch, it is also incredibly badly organised. Those involved don't really seem sure what the point is either. If I wanted to go to a tacky night-club, I'd go to Stringfellows, not an art gallery.

If this is supposed to be a populist venture, it is not going to work either. The investing parties come from the property and banking worlds, which is a good sign, as most commercial banking institutions would rather dive head first into their own vomit than contribute to the arts.

An educational link with the Royal College of Art and a research fellowship, government residencies on the second floor, two small 75-seat art cinemas, a restaurant, an art bookshop, a public gallery with a floor of 16,000 sq ft, bringing shows to London that could otherwise not be seen in the capital. As Peter Blake said, it's a good idea. But no one is going to come to the depths of Southwark to appreciate art in a warehouse. It is difficult to get to and less inviting than the nearby South Bank. The new Jubilee Line extension, only 150 yards away, is due to open in 1996, but I'll believe that when Robert De-F-N turns up.

So, the Start Gallery. It's cold and it's empty and it's pretentious and it's basically hell on earth. But is it art?

(Photographs omitted)