Where did we leave it with Part Five? So much has happened since then, where were we? On down the Lane, down through Allen Gardens, more of a graffiti space than a street art thing these days and all the better for it, thankfully those damn paste up artists mostly stay away from the ever evolving walls that run around the gardens. The main walls run along the railway line at either side where once the brilliant Nomadic Community Garden was on one side and Allen Gardens itself on the other. There’s a number of writers at work, there’s a dad teaching his young kids, there goes one of those walking tours, there’s someone shooting a music video, a rap thing, I like this walk (a couple of #43Leaves pieces are left), we’re taking the slightly edgy scenic route to Three Colts Lane and those relatively new galleries at the end of Herald Street back in East London’s Bethnal Green, but that, as we said last time, was for Part Six. Is there’s time for Part Six? Hey, I haven’t got time for all this thankless stuff (neither have you), there was Peckham to get to and a weekend in that Safehouse, and there’s been so many galleries explored since London Gallery weekend back at the start of June…
Part Six? Do we need to go on? Probably not, we (probably) will though, rather like the weekend itself and the Saturday trail and heading back from Brick Lane and the ever evolving graff of Allen Gardens and the train line, the no man’s land that takes us to Three Colts Lane and those rather polite new build galleries that you might argue sum up, in terms of art, the last fourteen years under this Conservative government, there no room for artist-led endeavour now, the conservative (small c) art establishment are back in almost full control now. Back towards Bethnal Green, we’ve taken in about a dozen galleries already and the day is still reasonably young, mid afternoon, we’ve taken in lots of galleries already, some of which, like the so far very disappointing Clerk’s House, the latest Shoreditch space recently opened by Emalin, we haven’t bothered to mention in terms of this ongoing Weekend feature.
Has anything that exciting happened at these relatively new Three Colts Galleries at the end of Herald Street yet? Herald Street itself, the street and not the gallery that takes the same name, was for a while back there threatening to be a little spontaneous, things would pop up in garages, in spaces in between the now knocked down bookend that was the Maureen Paley space and the aforementioned Herald Street gallery at the other end of the street. For a short while it almost felt like a new East London art street was emerging, alas developers and rents and the same old song and dance put pay to that and now we have three rather soulless functional new builds at the foot of another Lego tower of expensive housing. You’ve got a new Maureen Paley Gallery space hiding behind a frosted glass window (is it open or not and if it is are we welcome? They don’t really lay out the welcome mat, you never quite know if you can push the door or not?). Three of four newish gallery spaces at the foot of a new build on the recently redeveloped Three Colts Lane, something positive in these times of East London galleries demolished or priced out, replaced by the mostly heartless scurge of property redevelopment and beard growing coffee shops I guess? Mother’s Tankstation and Project Native Informant are both now found on the aforementioned Three Colts Lane, is it three or four spaces there? They do tend to melt into one characterless thing with very little to tell them apart and truth be told, I’m not seeing that much evidence that this rather conservative weekend of self-congratulation is that much different to any given weekend walking around London’s many galleries, I am reading a lot of questionable horsepoop from the establishment London art press –
“The fourth edition of London Gallery Weekend concluded on Sunday, June 2, solidifying its status as the world’s largest gallery weekend event. Over the span of three days, more than 50,000 art enthusiasts, collectors, and curators from the UK and abroad flocked to participating galleries and events, celebrating the vibrant and diverse gallery scene that London uniquely offers” so Artlyst tells us… ummmm, yeah, right…
Hey, who am I to question what I read on the Internet, Cork Street was as buzzing as it regularly is on a night when there’s several openings, I can’t say the East End was any more alive than on any other given weekend, I didn’t see crowds “flocking” and most of the more interesting shows encountered were, for various reasons (and yes we did ask), not actually officially part of the weekend. Bck to it, we’ve reached the three or fours spaces on Three Colts Lane as well as Herald Street Gallery itself – and there was the same spray painted broken window pane still lying on the street on Herald Street, that same piece of accidental art that we encountered back in January and this year’s disappointing Condo.
So what of the Three Colt Galleries? Well the Matt Bollinger show at Mother’s Tankstation was and still is worth your time, there’s some beautiful appreciation of light, Halftime looks at just that, Half time, American half times, something very different to half time at a sporting event over here. Matt Bollinger was born Kansas City, in 1980, he lives and works in N.Y. State, a different world, these are very American half times, no chantings of who the f**kin’ ‘ell are you over the queue for a overpriced pint of half time piss in a plastic glass (or the queue to give the piss back five minutes later). This might be Matt’s world, it isn’t mine, amazing light though. I guess we are encouraged to question what half time might mean, what the artist thinks half time might mean? The wider picture? The hopes and dreams? The losers and winners (as Accept might sing), are we to view the American dream and wonder if anyone is driving? What of the characters in Matt Bollinger beautiful paintings, the figures in the subtle light and the beautiful colours, who are they? Where are they? The Prom king? The lone figure? Where are they going? They’re a little cartoony for my tastes and really does it matter here in the East End of London a million miles away from those tailgate parties and half time American football dressing rooms? Beautiful paintings though, just because of the light, dramatic paintings, but do they say anything to any of us beyond the fact that they are rather beautiful to look at? Beautifully staged, beautifully lit, but what are they doing here in an East London side street?
Meanwhile next door at Project Native Informant there’s a modest three artist group show featuring the work of Antonia Kuo, Kathryn Kerr and Leslie Martinez called Phosphor, a show that I guess without really touching anything is rather tactile, bits of canvas scraps, used studio rags, used studio clothing, paper fragments, paint chips, pumice, glass beads and acrylic paint on canvas from Leslie Martinez, chemical painting on light-sensitive silver gelatin paper, acrylic, bullet-pierced aluminium relief in custom aluminium frame from Antonia Kuo, rather conventional Oil, acrylic and Flashe on canvas from Kathryn Kerr, I guess they all work well together in the space, I guess the three of them together make sense, I didn’t dislike any of it, I can’t say anything really ignited that much in me in here in this cold and rather sterile functional building. Project Native Informant has two spaces next door to each other and immediately next to Mother’s and the new Maureen Paley space, four spaces in a line on Three Colt Lane, their second (or other) space is currently occupied by a Laurence Sturla exhibition called Went to Country, it is certainly interesting in terms of how we look at things when they’re presented on a formal white gallery wall.
“For his first solo exhibition at Project Native Informant – Went to Country – the Vienna based Sturla has produced three wall sculptures, stemming from what could be imagined as a single source, as if they are cut, dismembered, unbolted or in a state of repair. Each work appears to be viewed through the lens of a post-mortem, displaying contents of a metaphorical belly – an exhausted landscape of a body: bolts akin to medical pins, portholes resembling fistulas. Side structures point to the surgically cut innards that track the geography around a quarry, diving deeper into the internal bowels that make up a clay cavern.
The term ‘went to country’ comes from the area known as clay country, St Austall, where large amounts of china clay have been mined for generations, drastically changing the landscape and the surrounding communities. On rainy days, mined clay deposits would overflow, staining the rivers and the landscape with the runoff. The clay has seemingly returned back to its source, a push and pull, a cycle loop, of the past and the present, of process and material, of object hood and the self”.
And there they are, three pieces of weather-worn overworked redundant machinery, or sculptures made out of bits of machinery, or whole pieces presented as wall-based sculpture, all industrial browns and rust stained life, they could be from an old diesel train or some Cornish mine and you do find yourself asking those post-mortem questions, it does do that. Where? Who? Who’s hands? Which engine? The deeper questions. Now this does feel a little more engaging, a little more, well, just something a little more. There’s heart here, life, lives, and rather than just being left to decay in some abandoned industrial otherness, here they are, presented as beauty on a white wall and yes, “simultaneously torn from the past, whilst being truthful to their making in the present”, around and around we go, I like that, I like this, who cares what I like, around and around we go. These pieces are beautiful, they’re more than that though, they’re life, they’re real, they’re art.
Meanwhile, Maureen Paley Gallery is currently exhibiting Hannah Starkey‘s Women in Space, well once you figure out the gallery is open then Maureen Paley is exhibiting. behind the frosted glass and the sign-less door that hides white-painted walls, Hannah Starkey’s large-scale photographic prints. Six rather powerful images in one room where the artist exploring the way the camera is used both by and against women, women’s relationship with photography – a subject close to Starkey’s heart. The other room features red self-portraits. The work is as slick as the gallery showing it, size is the weapon here, if indeed it is a weapon? is that just me? Am I being challenged? Am I worth challenging? There are layers of interplay, and yes obviously, it depends on who is looking at what the photographer was looking at herself – stating the bleedin’ obvious or what – but these pieces aren’t too obvious, nothing is, and we are aware that the subject(s) are aware that it is mostly staged, that even the unaware subjects might well be aware or staged (maybe?). There is a challenge to everyone here, artist, viewers, subjects and yes there is emotion, these aren’t just pretty pictures, are they even that? if they are then they are far more than that. Symbolic and yes, tense? Maybe? but then I’m not now or never have I ever been a teenage girl or a young woman and I kind of want to ask the thirty something lady standing next to me what she thinks, you can’t really do that in a gallery on a Saturday afternoon though can you? Well not in a gallery like this one anyway. As for the artist herself, and her large imposing red self portraits, I’m not sure what, if anything Hannah Starkey is revealing here? Does she even want to reveal anything with these mirrored images? That surely isn’t the point of these self-portraits other than telling us who she basically is and then leaving us to wonder as we go back to the first room and those six big pieces that are well worth your time if you have the time (there is still time)
Hey, we might be scoffing about Maureen Paley’s frosted glass and equally frosty reception, or the coldness of the other Three Colt spaces, but you should make time for art and none of this should be taken for granted, I just walked into four galleries and no one asked me for a penny, that really deserves to be appreciated and now I’m going to cross the road and go into Herald Street Gallery where Cole Lu‘s show is into a final weekend (by the time you read this, it will have closed). A show featuring burnt linen and birch panels alongside large-scale sculptures incised in minute detail, the presentation questions language, contexts and dogmas of historicisation and an existence before socially-imposed beliefs and rituals and yearning for an unadulterated and well maybe I’m flagging now and it isn’t you, it really is me and back along Herald Street where a lot of the junk and the accidental art that was there at the start of the year and Condo is there still. Back past the graff to Cambridge Heath Road and on with this London Gallery Weekend thing, drop in at IMT Gallery but nothing much really engaged in there, past the entry to Cell Space but that place hasn’t wanted to engage with anyone much for years, and on with the Weekend, it is South London night tonight, wonder what an overseas trip will reveal? Truth is we could have done this East London loop on any given weekend, but hey, let the London Gallery Weekend celebrate itself, 50,000 visitors my arse… Part Seven in a moment, maybe or are we done with this now… (sw)
The two shows at Project Native Informant both go on until June 29th, the Hannah Starkey show at Maureen Paley goes on until July 14th. The Matt Bollinger show at Mother’s Tankstation also goes on until June 29th,
Previously –
As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show..
THE ORGAN 