I guess Frieze Week is in full swing now, well no, like I said last time, I don’t guess, I know. I guess it is mostly about the big establishment galleries this week? Is there much going on by way of a real alternative? Much happening in the undergrowth or has the financial situation and the gentrification taken a big bite out of the genuine artist-led creativity now? Yes, we will be covering Frieze itself later this week, why wouldn’t we? No car parks this year though? No real defiance, what even became of the car parks? And nothing as exciting as last year’s brilliant Factory Project? Where’s the Anti-Frieze? Yes, the Other Art Fair is on again but that leaves a far more unpleasant taste than anything else happening this week, that really is about nothing more than whoever can afford to take part and and as we said this last year, the only photo you need from that one is this one and I really don’t know why any self-respecting artist would show at Truman Brewery at the moment? Surely sometimes art needs to stand for something more than just art doesn’t it?
Five more art things then. five art things, almost ahead of time this week. Five more art things happening somewhere around right now or any moment now. Five art shows to check out in the coming days. An (almost) weekly round up of recommended art events. Five shows, exhibitions or things we rather think might be worth checking out. Mostly London things for that is where we currently operate and explore, and like we said last time, these five recommendations come with no claims that they are “the best five” or the “Top Five”, we’re not one of those annoying art websites that ignore most things whilst claiming to be covering everything and proclaiming this or that to be the “top seven things” or the “best things this weekend”. This is simply a regular list of five or so recommended art things happening now or coming up very soon that we think you might find as interesting as we think we will. Did you catch up with that one we recommended at Flowers a couple of weeks ago? What a show – Before Frieze week kicks off, that breathtaking Ken Currie exhibition at Flowers on the Kingland Road. Wow (again), who paints like this in 2022?!
Five art things happening now and coming up in the next few days in no particular order then, just five art things happening around about now. Entry to these events, unless otherwise stated, is generally free.
1: Gina Birch, In My Fucking Room at Gallery 46 – Gina Birch has announced her new and no doubt very painterly exhibition, it will run from 14th October until 3rd November at Whitechapel’s rather decent art space known as Gallery 46. – “Artist and musician Gina Birch is among the extraordinary women to come out of England’s original punk movement. While she is perhaps best known as one of the founding members of the post-punk band The Raincoats, like many other musicians from that era her interests in music emerged as part of her visual art studies and practice. Her exhibition at Gallery 46 brings together the different creative ingredients and influences that have fed into the artist’s work. Birch reels them off, in the order she first encountered them: The Slits. Derek Jarman. Painting.” and well, hopefully that make a little sense, it is a bit of a mangled press release, hopefully you get the idea (and who are we to complain about mangled words and things not flowing?), the gist is that exciting painter Gina Birch has a show of work at Gallery 46, really hope that includes some of her excellent shoe paintings that tell so many tales, I’d really like to see then in a decent gallery, saw them exhibited in the back of a Hackney junk shop a few years ago, do love the marks she makes, the energy of her painting, they’re kind of what you’d expect from a Raincoat.
Seems like an age since we’ve been pulled to Gallery 46, they were on a roll at one point, they’ve been a little quiet recently. The so called Private View and opening is on Friday 14th October, 6pm until 10pm, no doubt the small rooms of 46 will be rather packed, the private views at Gallery 46 don’t tend to demand you get on a list and just let you in/ There is an artist tour and talk on Saturday 15th October, no idea what time. The gallery is open 1pm until 6pm, Tuesday through to Sunday. It was Luke Haynes at 46 during Frieze week last year, this year we find Gina Birch at the gallery. Gallery 46 is found at 46 Ashfield Street, Whitechapel, London E1. The show runs until 3rd November
Previously on these pages, actually there’s been loads of Gallery 46 coverage over the last few years
ORGAN THING: Sam Nicholson at Gallery 46, there’s a rather bold painter emerging here…
ORGAN THING: Celebrating the subversive with the Neo Naturists…
2: Jim Threapleton, Lorem Ipsum at No 20 Arts – This exhibition has already opened and runs until 23rd December 2022. “A solo exhibition of new works by Jim Threapleton offering his most expansive and personal collection to date. Lorem Ipsum continues to follow his pursuit of abstraction at the threshold of representation. It marks the development of a uniquely contemporary approach to traditional technique. Threapleton’s paintings are defiantly fluid. The plastic immediacy of oil paint drives a lyrical indeterminacy found between control and accident, depth and flatness, between the real and the indefinable. Gestural improvisation animates an unstable pictorial territory where the spectacle of image is superseded by a contemplative, expressive materiality that channels the spirit of painting’s Romantic legacy”.
No 20 Arts is found at 20 Cross Street, London N1 2BG. This exhibition has already opened and runs until 23rd December 2022. The gallery is open Tuesday through to Sunday, 10am until 6pm. More in this one very soon, watch this space.
3: Lee Maelzer at D Contemporary – We did already preview that Lee Maelzer exhibition that just opened at D Contemporary, we will mention it again with this round up, I know some of read nothing more than this list each week – ORGAN PREVIEW: You might say Lee Maelzer is a painter’s painter, she has a Frieze Week West End opening at D Contemporary that you really should try and see… –
“Lee Maelzer is a painter, known for her cinematic depictions of abandoned places, unheimlich interiors and dystopian landscapes. An urban explorer, they are normally based on her own photographs. This body of work, however, stems from images found on Facebook Marketplace for rooms to let in London. Appalled by the prices and quality of what is on offer, she was spurred to begin making what has become an ongoing series that explores the pressing subject of poor housing and the threat of homelessness that hangs over the heads of so many. The bed, in so many historical artworks a place of repose, sensuality and succour, instead becomes uninviting, lumpen, repellent.
The rooms are placed to the rental market with the knowledge that they will be taken, even vied for – so the photographs, apart from the use of wide-angle to make them look larger than they are – make no attempt at an aesthetic. Hangers are left on the bed, kettles on the floor, bare bulbs, crooked curtain rails and rumpled bedding or mattresses still in plastic propped against the wall. They are lonely rooms with no promise of comfort, simply a ‘place to be’.
Still itinerant, the artist’s lifelong experience of bad and insecure living conditions has imbued these paintings with a sense of claustrophobia and melancholy, without in any way being voyeuristic or exploitative.
Lee Maelzer is London-based artist, though primarily a painter she also makes collage and video. She studied at Central St Martin’s College and the Royal College of Art. Maelzer is exhibited widely and internationally, with twelve solo exhibitions to date. She has also curated seven exhibitions in London and is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University of East London”.
The Lee Malzer exhibition opens on Tuesday 11th October and runs until November 5th 2022, with a late evening Private View on Thursday 13th October (from 6pm until 8.30pm) D-Contemporary is at 23 Grafton Street, London, W1S 4EY. The Gallery is open Tuesday until Saturday, entry is free, 11am until 5pm (Saturday, Midday until 6pm)
Got a release about Damien Hirst burning his paintings here, not that his paintings made by his (recently made redundant) studio assistants rather thn him are anything worth getting worked up about, you don’t want to read about any of that do you? Thought not.
And as much as we love him, the only time we see or hear from Stik these days is via yet another press release to tel lus what he has for sale in which big name West End auction house there days, it is getting to be a little tedious mate, not a tedious as bloody Hirst but hey, some on, you need to put those eyes back on that one on Mare Street, poor thing has bee nblind since 2012,
And we did already mention that Peter Kennard talk at Richard Saltoun Gallery as part of the “Organised Killing: A Visual History of War From 1914 To Ukraine”, That link will take you to a big long piece about the show and the talk and well, we won’t repeat ourselves again
Richard Saltoun Gallery is at 41 Dover Street, London, W1S 4NS. The Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am until 6pm, Midday until 5pm on Saturdays. The exhibition runs from October 10th until November 25th.
Özgür Kar is back doing something Emalin, not at their place though, they’re over in Cork Street for Frieze week, “Emalin is pleased to present Hand Play, two new multi-media sculptures by Özgür Kar, we’ll go and see, but hey, we can’t really recommend it before hand. Hand Play is on show from 11th to 15th October 2022, 11am-6pm, late opening on Frieze West End Night: Thursday, 13th October, 6pm-8pm. i don’t know, have Emalin been doing it like they once did?
4: Universal Everything, Lifeforms at 180 The Strand – Well curiosity never killed the cat and while I do tend to think art without paint is pretty pointless;“Digital art collective Universal Everything present their largest UK show to date at 180 Strand.Lifeforms will see a collection of characterful and futuristic moving image artworks inhabit the vast subterranean spaces of 180 The Strand, many using technology to evolve and shift with time and interaction. Universal Everything use cutting edge digital technology to create soulful digital life and explore a wide range of human behaviours, as well as the natural world – from evolution, parades, and the dynamics of crowds, to the diversity of nature”.
180 Studios is 180 The Strand, London WC2R 1 EA Exhibition dates: 12th October until 18th December 2022. Lot of galleries and spaces using just their door numbers to name their spaces this week. You do need to pay to get to see this one (sorry about that), details on their website.
5: Georgie Stewart, Travels in My Van at Tap & Bottle – “This October, artist and illustrator Georgie Stewart will be transforming Tap & Bottle, London Bridge, into a world of her own for her second solo show, Travels in My Van”. This looks refreshing, this looks like an artist doing it herself, this looks like something to go see.
“This is a new collection of works from and inspired by Georgie’s recent four month trip around Europe in her bright orange camper van, Jaffa. Georgie has developed her own visual language by combining a natural drawing style with explosive colour selection. Her artworks embrace colour-driven textures and vibrant, eye-popping landscapes. The show is an ode to the feelings of freedom, anticipation and adventure that an epic road trip like this brings. Georgie invites the viewer to dive headfirst into her world of life on the road, travelling through scenes of the shimmering coastline of the south of France, to the fresh oranges and lemons of the Amalfi Coast and idyllic olives trees from the Greek island of Skopelos, where Georgie completed an Artist Residency in May. The exhibition will be set to the cosy backdrop of Tap & Bottle, a charming wine bar tucked away in a characterful Grade II listed building in London Bridge”. It was all going so well until they said wine bar, did anything good ever happen in a bloody wine bar? Open Tuesday 11th – Saturday 22nd October. Tap & Bottle, 64 Union St, London SE1 1SG. “All welcome to the Private View on Sunday 16th October, 12 – 4pm” which kind of has you wondering why they call it a private view, hey I’m being pedantic, probably something to do with wine bars and no one pulling a pint.
And that brings us to Frieze itself (as well as Frieze Masters), opening on Wednesday 12th October and running until Sunday 16th, the big bad bloated monster of a thing brings together over 280 galleries from 42 countries, including those specially curated sections, “the two fairs will celebrate the creative spirit of the city”. Not sure if we can take that “celebrate the creative spirit of the city” with anything more than the hoot of disdain it demands, it is little more a big fat art business corporate take over of Regents park for four days, it is kind of obscene, it does feel like going behind enemy lines and it has been way way too conservative in recent years, hey, it is a dirty job but someone has to do it, someone has to go in and cover it I mean (the things we do just for you). Don’t ask us how much a ticket is, several arms and legs I imagine?
“Frieze London and Frieze Masters will take place from October 12 to 16 in The Regent’s Park, bringing together galleries from 42 countries, to celebrate the creative spirit of the city. Led by Eva Langret, Frieze London will feature over 160 of the world’s leading contemporary galleries. Frieze Masters, directed by Nathan Clements-Gillespie, will feature over 120 galleries, showing work from ancient to modern.
Eva Langret, Director of Frieze London said: ‘This year’s fair promises to not only celebrate the cultural life of London but also showcase its global reach. Our participating gallery list reflects the city’s position as an international centre, bringing together some of the most exciting galleries, from major names to emerging spaces. Our special sections, of Focus and Indra’s Net, will promote discovery and foreground some of the most exciting creative ideas that are shaping conversations on contemporary art today.’
Nathan Clements-Gillespie, Director of Frieze Masters added: ‘2022 marks an exciting year for Frieze Masters as we celebrate the fair’s tenth anniversary and our launch in Seoul. This year the fair will deliver an unmissable mix of art from across six millennia of history, featuring some of the most loved-figures as well as highlighting previously unknown talent. From Neolithic China to Nigeria in the 1960s, the opportunity for discovery is particularly evident in our special sections Spotlight, curated by Camille Morineau and AWARE, dedicated to pioneering women artists from the 20th century, and Stand Out which returns under the guidance of Luke Syson.’
And well, The Mixtape show opened on line last Tuesday evening, it has now been viewed just over 18,000 times by people from all over the globe, that’s one week on from the opening, here’s the link if you wish to join them – Cultivate presents Mixtape No.1 – an online art exhibition.
THE ORGAN 