Loving The Alien:Inside The Alienarium 5.

Do you believe in aliens? I don't - but I'm open to being proved wrong on that. In some ways, it would be quite nice to meet aliens. As long as they're the friendly type. I'm thinking someone like The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones, ET, or perhaps some alien race who could teach us dumb and warring humans how not to destroy our planet or fight among ourselves.

I'd be less interested in making the acquaintance of the kind of xenomorphs who ripped open John Hurt's chest from the inside in the film Alien or the Martians from Mars Attacks! There's certainly so many different ways of imagining what extra terrestrials might look like that those who go on about the Roswell Greys, or Zeta Reticulans, start to look a little unimaginative.

At the Serpentine Gallery, Strasbourg born Dominique Gonazelez-Foerster has set about creating her own personal idea of what an encounter with aliens might look like and she's called it Alienarium 5. Though there's no mention of Alienarium 1, 2, 3, or indeed, 4.

The question she's asking is, quite simply, "what if aliens were in love with us? What would change?". It's a good concept but the exhibition, unless you've booked up for the extras - such as a virtual reality room - in advance, consists of one large round room with its circular walls painted with fantastical and phantasmagorical scenes, some quite apocalyptic looking, and populated with a cast of famous people and extra terrestrials.

She's made good use of the Serpentine's space and as the Serpentine used to be a tea house she has, quite cleverly, harked back to its original use as a meeting place. Except this time it's aliens we're meeting.

There's even cushions on the floor so you can lie down and take it all in. Or read from the site specific books lying around. Books like Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, John Wydnham's The Chrysalids, and some by Ursula K Le Guin.

There are asteroids, there are otherly landscapes, and there's host of faces you may recognise. ET himself and Yayoi Kusama (both below) but also Diana, Princess of Wales, Tilda Swinton, and, of course - as he's half-alien anyway, David Bowie.

But, sadly, the whole thing is really just an amusing, and short lived, distraction. I would hope for an encounter with aliens to be life changing and if those aliens were to love me (someone's got to) then even more so. While it's a big ask that a smallish exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery should change my life I still came away feeling a bit underwhelmed by my time in the Alienarium 5. Maybe aliens, like Earthings, sometimes disappoint us. Maybe Alienarium 6 will be better.