Buffer 2 – a group show at Guts Gallery, Hackney, London – Still don’t quite know what to make of the attitudes at East London’s Guts Gallery. Darlings of the London art establishment right now, the new gatekeepers so we’re told, are they pretty much feeling the same as the old ones? Fair to say their openings are always busy, their lighting is still rather “challenging” and if you really want to see the art, their opening nights really aren’t the time to go. Guts openings are very much about the event rather than what’s on their shadowy walls, which kind of has us asking why we have turned up for the opening night once again and especially on a cold wet Friday night at the start of November when there’s so many other places we could be? Hey, we’re Hackney-based, we still feel the somewhat misguided need to get out there and support an increasingly fractured East London art scene, it would be nice to think there was still some kind of hint of some kind of something somewhere near unity, there really isn’t though.

.So yes, Guts openings aren’t the best in terms of actually seeing the art, but that’s the thing, at the end of it all, when you cut away all the aloof crap, the unfriendly art school attitudes, the rather tediously conservative by-the-book we’ve got a degree in curating, their annoying talk of a new generation of art collectors, they do tend to show some good art and that surely has to be the bottom line. Hey at least this time it isn’t all about the damn QR code! Although they still won’t put a simple little unobtrusive label somewhere near a piece of work – last time I had the audacity to bring this up, they blasted that labels aren’t eco-friendly and that I was rude and anyway, labels are old fashioned, out of date, for old people or something like that. I’m guessing the big pile of A4 printed pieces of paper with the gallery maps are better for the planet then a simple label by a painting then?

.

So a wet Friday night at the start of November up in the heart of Hackney, the guts if you like, the gallery itself is of course unsignposted and hidden upstairs in a new build block down at the end of a street still full of (thankfully) alive and active railway arch car repair garages (and a decent piece or two in terms of the graff on some of those garage doors). The darkness of the cobbled street does kind of add to the adventure of it all at this time of year, there is something about going to an art show opening when the nights have drawn in 

Yes, the place is busy, it feels mostly like a crowd of (art) students in here, never seems to be any of the regular faces you see at other art spaces at a Guts opening, things really are fractured these days.  The place is busy, the lighting is dark, there’s people casting shadows all over the art, the beer has already run out, the buffers are buffering, people are standing in front of the art chatting in the way they always do at these things, (some things don’t change). We’re at an opening night for a new group show, an exhibition called Buffer 2, I’m guessing most of the art is the work of recent graduates, it is feeling all very very (very) art school in here, people making thier early moves…        

BUFFER
noun
1. a person or thing that reduces a shock or that forms a barrier between incompatible or antagonistic people or things.

The gallery statement rages against the machine that is the art business or the gallery system or something like that, from where I sit, Guts pretty much are the art business, they certainly feel like part of the closed door gallery system – “championing the next generation of collectors”, what the actual flip! Do collecters get to be championed now for gawd sake?! Guts talk of wanting to open up a constructive dialogue with young, post-graduate artists just getting their start in the art world and blah blah blah, is this really what young artists need? All this bulshit? Gawd, we’re a million miles away from Joshua Compston and his sticks of dynamite now, what the hell would he make of all this? For all their faults, and yes it was a very different playground back then, for all their faults, the YBAs rightly said f**k all this crap, we’ll do it ourselves. Does it feel like a whole load of horse poop in here? Not the art you understand, the gallery attitude. The bottom line though, the important thing at the end of it all, is that, wade through the bullshit and the bad lighting, cut through all the nonsense, the business talk and the self-congratulating nausea, when you cut through the ageism and the rest of it and, as with most Guts exhibitions, there is some good art on the walls.

Yes, most of the pieces do kind of feel like degree show pieces or artists still finding their voices, their feet, be interesting to see where some of these artists are in five or so years when the reality of being an artists without the art school safety net comes to bite. But the art was good, there were one or two pieces that really really stood out, not a bad piece in the show actually, a fine body of work. Good to see that really strong painting from Jesse Akele and that Alya Hatta piece deserves a revisit in better light, the Izzie Beirne piece was powerful and well, I don’t know, I enjoyed pretty much all the art, enjoyed the show, indeed the event but now I’ve read the statement and made a visit to the gallery website to try and find out who’s work we were looking at I’m annoyed again (see, a label would have been so so simple, take quick shot of the work, take another shot of the label and Bob is yer dad’s bother) and yes I did grab one of the maps, who knows where the hell that is now). So yes, I enjoyed the show, the art was good but hey, I just feel annoyed by the whole Guts thing. if they’d just cut the crap and stop being so damn annoying (and maybe consider it isn’t all about the art schools that not everyone can afford to go to) then they could be so damn good (and I see none of our previous reviews have made their self-congratulating press page either). Good art show, but hey, should we believe the Guts hype as much as they clearly do themselves?  

Guts Gallery is at Unit 2 Sidings House, 10 Andre Street, Hackney, London, E8 2AA, next to where Chrome and Black are based now if that helps. Opening Times: Tue – Sat 11am – 6pm. Buffer 2 is on until November 24th 2023

As always, click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the baddly lit slidesoh.w