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Babak Ganjei at One Mare Street / Nanhee Kim at Moosey Hoxton, July 2023 – It is always good to see a new art space opening, as we’ve said many times before on these fractured pages, Hackney and East London is rather in need of art spaces (and not just hash-tagged slogans in windows further along Mare Street). One Mare Street, pretty much at the top of Vyner Street and all that that involves, has always looked like it should be an art space, indeed it had been from time to time over the years, it has also been a number of different eating spaces, a performance place, recently it was some kind of mysterious cafe come meeting place for musicians thst we could’nt quite work out, it really has always looked like it should be a proper art space.

One Mare Street has just opened, there it is on the border of Hackney on the Cambridge Heath road to Bethnal Green, brilliant to see, let’s hope it lasts. The first show, a rather wordy Babak Ganjei show has already been and gone, a short sharp opening shot of a show. Babak Ganjei’s work is rather popular, busy opening night, I have to admit it doesn’t do that much for me, there is a lot of this wordy sloganny wit around, all yer misfortune tellers and what have you, I’m not going to lay into it, live and let live and if you want words then what’s these words worth? It just is really good to see the space coming to life, just good to see the show, and to feel the friendly enthusiasm coming out of the space when we walk in for a second time (something else sadly lacking in the now often rather aloof too-cool-for-you art-school-fuelled spaces that are currently to be found in and around the guts of Hackney. Looks like something good is maybe (hopefully) happening here. next up Ben Eine and Lucie Flynn and something called Entwined and the white outside walls of the space no longer being all white washed and crying out for colour. Watch this space, fingers crossed.

And just a little further up the street, around the corner and up the Hackney Road, past a Bag Lady and past Sherbet Green and the industrial estate where the rather rewarding Annka Kultys Gallery hides itself now, past that short lived space The Split gallery occupied until they took their bad attitude and their Instagram reels (as their only form of communication) to the Roman Road, up the Hackney Road to where once there was a gloriously large Stik guarding the entrance to the borough and where we now find one of those new builds and the once full-of-life artist studios all gone, replaced by one of those nightmarish Amazon shop things that people are sleepwalking into without any kind of a hint of a question. Up the Hackney Road and into Hoxton and Moosey’s fast expanding empire (so fast they don’t even mention this new month-long show or the space itself on their website).

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Moosey are an interest lot, a slick, very slice (over slick some might say) operation that started life (and still is found) in Norwich, put on a one off show or two in London (Yok was particularly good) before setting up a second home in Islington and now what looks like it might be a third space in Hoxton. The new space is big, a new-build space, all big windows and raw concrete, an almost brutalist interior, I like it. I like the space within the space, I like that they haven’t over-filled it for this (first?) show, this Nanhee Kim solo show that’s opening tonight, a show intriguingly called We Were All Once Virgins…

Kim’s artwork feels very current, almost drawing on the absurds of the modern world, it feels playful, never too playful though, serious rather than throwaway, a depth. Colourful, bordering on an almost surreal, stories to be found, lines slightly blurred, we’re not quite sure what we’re looking at, that is a good thing. Engaging, yes, a touch of humour maybe, thought provoking, complex…

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“The term “Virgin” encompasses the initial moments encountered throughout our lives, irrespective of our sexual experiences. Transitioning from a state of virginity to a life of experience is not an entirely unprecedented event but rather a process of acquainting oneself with new facets of existence.”

It feels very personal work, it feels like her paintings, as engaging as they are, are for her rather than for us, it feels like contemplation – I rather like that. I rather like being in here, oblivious to all the opening night noise and the talk of the people who aren’t really looking and the DJ and whatever he or she is playing, whatever it was the art blocked it out/ I rather like this show, Moosey might be a little too slick but I do like what they come up with.  And on to Redchurch Street for another opening, whisper it, but it feels a tiny tiny bit like 2014 in East London, only a tiny bit though, can we get some of it back? (sw)   

One Mare Street is, of course, found at 1 Mare Street, Hackney, London E8, Top of Vyner Steet, on the corner by The Last Tuesday Society and the canal bridge.  

Moosey Hoxton is at The Shoreditch Exchange, Hackney Road, London E2 8GY, The Nanhee Kim exhibition runs until July 27th.

as always, click on an image to see the whole thing or t orun the slide show (kind of looks like I need a new phone doesn’t it.)