Covering all four walls is a wraparound mural depicting a scorched, post-apocalyptic Earth. On the wall opposite me, girders and gears loom in smoke-filled air. On the far right, a lifelike image of conjoined sparrow heads pops out of nowhere, like a cutting from a tabloid newspaper. Next to it, a monstrous tree with Medusa-like foliage dominates the wall, its branches heavy with lethal, fanged fruit. These and other images form the post-industrial backdrop - a habitat - for the sculptures crowding the room. They’re all hybrids made from bits of metal, wood, plastic and glass. They’re inorganic but somehow alive. None of them are actually moving, like the chicken-legged tank in the gallery upstairs does, but they all they seem about to.

Right in front of me is the figure of an eight-foot satyr. It struts proudly on a riser, chest outthrust. The curving steel S’s of its legs seem almost too thin to support its lofty and graceful poise. Its face is narrowed to predatory snout, a pair of antlers swept back on the top like flattened ears. Chains dangle from its elbows and upper arms like jewellery, and its ratchet fingers curve to dangerous points. Its skin is made from rusty plates and the leather and fur of a split boot.

Beside the satyr, an equally statuesque creature is caught in fluid mid-stride. It’s a cross between an ostrich and a T-Rex - reincarnated, I'm told, from one of Joe Rush’s old motorcycles. Steel vertebrae extend into a tail and a neck at either end, tipped with a tail light and a headlight (a visual pun). The neck bends upwards, horn-tipped head jerked back in surprise as if something in the sky is hurtling... or swooping... towards it.

Next is a giant skull made from vaguely reptilian chunks of rock. It’s mounted on a giant hinge, and I can imagine it swivelling suddenly downwards to devour an unsuspecting viewer.

On the opposite side of the room from it, a human skull sags against a wall, a fossil from some long-forgotten epoch. Its electric orange teeth are etched with that mantra so favoured by retail merchants: ‘Best ever’. A miniature, comic partridge pecks the remaining flesh from the skull's head, maybe mocking the modern shopper's endless search for a perfect product. The triviality of that lifestyle pales against this vivid stew of death, rebirth and mutation.

Nearby, a candelabra swims towards the ceiling like an inverted squid, its tentacle-like holders sprouting white, dripping candles. A pregnant tripod spider looms behind it, watching everyone and everything with heartless eye-lenses.

Aside from the skulls, the only human forms in here are the imploring hands that reach towards you from a giant wooden wheel, begging to be freed from the spokes they're impaled upon. Flesh accessorizes the machine in this world, not the other way around. It's panacea for anyone who feels tired of the babbling, overheated mass of humanity; an unsettling but welcome reversal of fortunes.

As I leave the first room, I turn and take another look around it. The people behind me are reacting pretty much the same way I did to its dark atmosphere; they hesitate in the entrance before moving cautiously inside. They almost tiptoe past the sculptures like they’re afraid of stirring the suspended apocalypse into life. Then I pass through the door. Overhead is yet another skull, this one framed with a mane of rusted chains. It glowers a warning of worse things to come, but the perception of menace proves to be just that.

The next room is a whiter, brighter, more civilized space, making me feel like I’ve jumped forward several millennia. The pieces here are mounted on podiums like trophies; relics salvaged from the Iron age next door. Hybrids still abound but they're smaller and more refined, downsized by evolution into more intricate, human-like life forms.

To me the mark of a real artist is the ability to breathe life into inanimate objects and even in this sterile place everything still seems alive. There’s a cyborg head made of blue glass - is it a cast of a living woman or an imaginary one? Either way, her keen serenity is palpable. In a high corner, a vulture perches next to the featureless and cowering figure of a caged man. On a podium, a rat pokes its head and paws out at you, steel face filled with uncanny brilliance. By the entrance, a mannequin with horns swishes its ornate metal tail.

The centrepiece in this room is an upright plane wing painted with a sensual, reclining nude in a gas mask. It’s one of a series of similar paintings done on military wing panels - the only works depicting humans as they naturally appear. The materials and imagery used in these hint at the cause of our species' disappearance from both this landscape and the first. The most poignant one depicts a head-scarfed woman, screaming up at what appears to be The Final Bomb as it whizzes downwards from a clear blue sky.

But taken as a whole, the message of the works in both rooms still seems hopeful: even as life exterminates itself, it defies death by taking on new and unprecedented forms.

****

When I speak to Joe Rush, the founder of Mutoid Waste Company, he confirms my feeling that this exhibition is telling some sort of story. Having worked as a set designer, it's only natural for him to stage his works like props from a movie set, turning spectators into participants as he does. The sheer scope of the pieces is intended to thrust us physically into another reality. Their immediacy makes it impossible not to change - or be changed by - its content.

That explains some of the more casual, playful works which dot the exhibition like clever afterthoughts. My personal favourite of these is a square of penciled ‘blah-blah-blah’s’ sandwiched between some well-executed prints in the first floor gallery. Underneath the square, a mobile phone charger is plugged into a wall socket. The other end of it is stuck rather pointedly into the phrase “Shut the fuck up!” It’s more like elaborate graffiti than art, but it works.

I ask Joe what Mutoid Waste Company does with its larger sculptures. Part of me knows what the answer must be but I still do a double take when he tells me the answer: what they can’t sell they scrap. Most artists I know would be heartbroken to lose something they’d spent so much time and effort on, but MWC seem to relish the challenge of melting down and starting over again. I can sort of sympathize with that, and not just on a personal level. Joe explains that destroying a piece starting over again gives them a chance to rearrange it, add something new to it or take something away; to “mutate”. That constant change where Mutate Britain's sense of energy movement comes from. Kind of like the Tube, it's constantly undergoing improvements. But unlike the Tube, every new piece unveiled is literally the best one ever. Maybe I misunderstood the meaning of that orange skull, after all…

I’m starting to see that Mutoid Waste Company is a philosophy as well as a collective. As the exhibition wears on, the people and pieces involved in it will continue evolving. Viewers will morph into artists and artworks will morph into materials, and then back into artworks again. Just as in the real world, nothing in Mutate Britain stays the same for very long. That's what makes it so relevant, and that's also why you'll want to keep coming back, just like I did.

Mutate Britain is on every Friday, Saturday and Sunday until the 21st December at the Behind the Shutters Gallery, Cordy House, 87-95 Curtain Rd EC2. Anyone who’s anxious to rescue an original piece of Mutoid artwork from the scrap heap by purchasing it can contact the collective through their website: www.mutatebritain.co.uk

Thanks very much to Wreckage for the engaging and informative tour of the galleries… it was a party in itself!