Do we need an introduction? All very simple, five art things coming up or happening right now, same as lwe said last week, a born again regular (unless it all falls off the edge of a cliff again) almost certainly weekly, or something like weekly, a weekly round up of recommended art events, shows exhibitions and things we rather think might be worth checking out, dates for you diary and such. Mostly London for that’s where we currently operate and explore, and no claims that these are “the best five” or the “Top Five”, we’re not one of those art websites that ignore most things whilst claiming to be covering everything and proclaiming this or that to be the top thing or the best thing. this is just regular list a five or so art things we think you might find interesting…

1: Sam Windett – Remodel at The Approach – “For Remodel, British artist Sam Windett will exhibit recent paintings in The Annexe, produced through his distinctive process of layering paint and paper. Windett works through a system of continuously adding and subtracting materials, modelling and remodelling the canvas surface” The Approach is above the pub, well through the pub of the same name and the mysterious door at the end of the bar that takes you up to the the first floor gallery at 47 Approach Rd, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9LY. Opening times: Weds-Sun, 12-6pm –  . www.theapproach.co.uk.

There’s also a Lisa Oppenheim show in the main room of The Approach at the moment, a show called The American Colony – “In her new exhibition, The American Colony, Oppenheim highlights her unique ability to translate historical subjects and early methods of photo-making through contemporary experimental darkroom processes”.  Hope you didn’t miss the excellent Phillip Allen show at the same venue – ORGAN THING: Modest paintings, small paintings, very big paintings, Phillip Allen at The Approach gallery, London E2…

 

 

2: Anita Klein – Conversations at Eames Fine Art Gallery. -This is a fascinating new exhibition which does not only show off Anita’s newest work, but also explores her working method in more depth; Anita is a master of many different techniques and regularly switches from painting to producing sketches, linocuts, drypoints, monotypes or even screenprints.  This show examines the relationships between these different methods of working on a single subject, and gives us all the chance to compare the results and to enjoy the small changes Anita makes with the works when adapting the work to suit a new technique, or indeed using the different working method to push the image in a new direction. Preview: Wednesday 3 April, 6.00pm – 8.30pm. Exhibition Continues: 4th April to 5th May.  Eames Fine Art Gallery  is at 58 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD.

3:  The Fields Beneath is a three person art show at St. Augustine’s Tower in Hackney, we’re told this is a “Hymn to an empty building. Vacant lot. A scratched graffiti the first sign of life, scraped back to reveal the fields beneath”, What can we make of that? Well who knows? But it is an exciting venue and those images do look intriguing.

” We are three artists with a history of living, working and art making in the forgotten corners, architectural oubliettes and urban interstices of this most multi layered, trans temporal metropolis of them all… London! We were attracted by St Augustine’s Tower as a unique exponent of these qualities of a living urban history. We share a sense of ‘psycho geography’ – the exploration of urban environments that emphasises playfulness and drifting. The term “psycho geography” was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” It has also variously been defined as “a total dissolution of boundaries between art and life”, also “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities… just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape”. These strategies for survival in an ever evolving urban environment are, I think, to be found in different ways in our individual approaches to making art. Psychogeography is perhaps most immediately identifiable in Pete’s street photography, using an ancient Nokia camera phone to capture and re-contextualise glimpses of the hoardings and temporary structures of urban regeneration/gentrification. However if you retrace the steps taken by Rocco to retrieve the fragments and echoes of industrial processes he uses in his day to day work life, you can glimpse the same restless energy for dissolving the boundaries between art and work, and for an almost pastoral joy in the materiality of things.

For myself I suggest that my art comes from a need to create narrative structures that incorporate or contextualise the disparate forms of my body and the world into matrix within which I can live. I suggest that this romantic relationship with the material world feels more urgent than ever before with the arrival of the new communities and structures of social media, globalisation and the online worlds adding to the overcrowding of human experience. Each of us three urban “flaneurs” has brought to this special building the results of his own enquiry and response to the post-industrial environment. Exploring a mishmash of themes ranging from the fetishisation and alienating effects of work and the workplace, the materiality of the body, and the location of the humane within the industrial . We invite newcomers to discover St Augustine’s tower for themselves, it is a historical gem, hiding in plain sight (site?), in the midst of the Hackney you thought you knew… Hope you can make it”. Adam Zoltowski. Adam is joined by Rocco Turino and Pete Burke.   The show opens tonight, Friday March 29th (6pm until 9pm) and rums until April 7th St Augustine’s Tower stands in St John’s Church Gardens not far from Hackney Central Railway Station, Hackney, London, E8 1HT

5: “Fantabuloso – graphic art by Villain” opens tonight at Atom Gallery, “A Pop Art and Polari extravaganza – a bona show of new graphic art and prints from the artist Villain”.The show then runs from Saturday 30th March until 20th April whenever that maybe. Atom Gallery is at 127 Green Lanes, London N16 9DA. The 341 and 141 bus routes run past the gallery, the gallery is also a ten minutes from Canonbury Station (London Overground)

6: The Fruit Shop opens over at Columbia Road, London E2, on Thursday evening April 4th… Trumpet blowing again, while we’re here, well if I don’t blow it then who the hell will? The Fruit Shop opens over at Columbia Road, London E2, on Thursday evening April 4th…  Sean Worrall, Cultivate co-founder and pro-active East London painter, opens a new solo show in an old green groucers shop over by the flower Market next week

Following on from 2018’s year-long #365ArtDrop18 piece, a piece of work that took in the Byline Festival, Deptford X and the Leytonstone Arts Trail, Sean Worrall takes a short break from the constant Cultivating and presenting of works from other artists via Cultivate to open The Fruit Shop. The Fruit Shop also follows on from Sean’s take over of a working Edwardian tailor’s shop in Hackney with fellow painter Emma Harvey back in 2016 (Sean was brought up in a shop, his parents ran a newsagents, little shops and market stalls are in his blood, the plight of Ridley Road Market is bothering him at the moment)

The Fruit Shop opens on the evening of Thursday April 4th (6pm until 9pm) at Shipton Street Gallery, an East London gallery for over ten years now, the space is a former greengrocer’s shop that still has the old till and some of the fittings.  The show opens on the evening of the 4th, the gallery will then be open over two weekends, two Saturdays and Sundays, 11am until 5pm on April 6th/7th and April 13th/14th (the gallery is also someone’s home, it normally only opens it on Sundays),  You find the gallery on Shipton Street, at the top end of Columbia Road, the flower market and everything that comes with the rather unique space. Everyone is welcome to the opening of course, nonr of that get on a list nonsense

A SEAN WORRALL solo show and busy walls packed with fruit and more, a solo show but a show also featuring guest artists CHARLIE McFARLEY, SOFIA MARTINS-GRAY, SUZIE PINDAR (The Naked Artist), YULIA ROBINSON and CHRIS DEWIRE

A Fruit Shop? It works like this; “I love small shops, I grew up in shops, I love market stalls, recently I was reminded how much I love just painting fruit. I was walking through Ridley Road Market over in Dalston, I love walking through the reality of Ridley Road Market, I was buying a big bag or oranges, you get great deals over there at Ridley Road, go support the local market traders rather than the corporation multi national supermarket with all that packaging that isn’t needed. The man doing the selling of the oranges said “here painter man, have a lemon to paint”, that was back in January. I’ve been rediscovering my love of still life and the simple pleasure of painting fruit ever since, I’ve had Peter Prendergast shouting in my ear about looking at it properly, I’ve been painting new layers of fruit over old things, on found bits of wood, cardboard from the street (by the way do look up Peter Prendergast if you don’t know of him, wonderful Welsh painter, brilliant man). I;ve been painting oranges from Hackney,, juicy looking pomegranates, grapefruit from Well Street, Lemons from London bridge (okay, I admit I did get that one from a supermarket, it was late, I was walking home from the White Cube and the opening night of Tracey Emin’s show, my review is here and a second look here by the way). I hadn’t planed to show the fruit paintings, I was just enjoying doing the painting, there was no great plan, but then then Pete from the gallery over by Columbia Road said you need an old shop to show that fruit in and yes, of course I did…A solo show, busy walls, walls packed with paintings of fruit and more..”

WHY GUEST ARTISTS?  “Yes, The Fruit Shop will be a solo show and return to the gallery that was once a much loved local greengrocer’s shop, I love that the old till and some of the shop fittings are still there, I love that the older locals come in and tell us about it, that was one of the best things about last year’s six week residency at Shipton Street Gallery, the engagement with the people from the local estate, the tales of the locals who took the time to come in, the conversations with a reving socialist who was once Thatcher’s Butler at Number Ten, that’s the reason for going back rather than just the colour of the Sunday flower Market.  A two week solo show but there will be three or four of guest artists on the walls or plinths, I’ve included guest artists at all of my solo shows over the last ten years, small areas of a solo show to expose the work of other artists that were exciting me at the time, I don’t see why all artists don’t do it? Bands do it all the time, “special guests”, you feel cheated when there’s no opening band, I’ve discovered some of my favourite bands by just getting there early to see who the special guest is, why don’t artists do it? Special guests at previous solo shows have included, Maria Slovakova, Carne Griffiths, Twinklle Troughton, Skeleton Cardboard, Quiet British Accent, Chantal Powell, Rosso, This One, Elisabeth Osbourne and quite a few more (whatever happened to Elisabeth? she was, and hopefully still is, an excellent painter, I send her a text or an e.mail every few months, no reply and I never see her taking part in other shows, I hope she’s still out there, I hope she’s still painting, she was a gueats at the Kensal Green Cemetery show a few year back, excellent painter). I’ve always thought artists should have “special guests” or “support bands” at their solo shows. imagine if it was a regular thing, something all artists did, what if say Tracey Emin had three pieces of art from three guest artists that most people had never heard of hanging on that empty wall down by the toilets in the White Cube? Or what if so and so did it, or thingy? What if some of the artists I’ve invited to do it did it as well? Artists on the whole are not good at supporting each other (besides turning up at opening nights to drink all the free wine that is) , it is something I will always try do, well no, not try, it is something I will always do. no “try” about it – just a small area of a gallery, and it will have to be a small area this time, Shipton Street Gallery is a beautiful little space, it will be an intimate show.

This time I shall be giving a little wall space to a born and bread Hackney-based street artist called Charlie McFarley (although I do believe he’s been gentrified out of East London now) a photographer called Sofia Martins-Gray who really does paint so beautifully with her Polaroid camera and as I won’t be using (all) the gallery plinths I shall be be handing a couple of them over to an artist called Yulia Robinson and her Pomegranate sculptures (she is mostly a painter, not always though,.Suzie Pinder (aka the Naked Artist) will have a couple of things on the wall, something ot d owith  oranges not being the only fruit, and I’ve also invited a wonderful painter from York called Chris Dewire who I only discovered last week, saw one of his paintings for sale on an on-line auction site, had to bid on it, I won it, it looks even better in the flesh so I invited him to join us with a small painting or two”

The Fruit Shop opens on Thursday April 4th, 6pm until 9pm  Everyone is welcome – Sean Worrall / www.cultivategallery.com

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