Has the London art year and 2024 started yet? We scraped through so called Blue Monday, we went to the rather underwhelming opening of Emalin‘s new Shoreditch gallery at the rather historic Clerk House and found the white to be too disrespectfully bright and the art, on the whole, to be, how can we politely put it? Rather, save for a couple of pieces. dare we say just a tiny bit boring. After the disappointment of last Thursday’s Cacotopia08 cancellation and our well wrapped up arrival in the cold and wet on said second Thursday of the year to find a rather sad looking Annka Kultys Gallery and the remains of last year’s show still half-heartedly up on the walls. The aborted Cacotopia08 was followed by Friday’s finally getting to see Moosey‘s much trumpeted 2024 group show at their rather cold-hearted slightly brutalist Hoxton space. Cacotopia was once such a positive way to start the art year, this should have been the 8th year. Back when it was a different artist each week for the first month of the year it was brilliant, early encounters with artists such as Bex Ilsley, Richie Calver, Nicole Coson, Rui Lin, and especially Marton Nemes, not so much when it became just another group show but we were rather looking forward to what has almost become the traditional start to the London art year… 

So yes we did finally get to see the exhibition at Moosey‘s after two aborted attempts – two annoying encounters with their we’re-not-open-today-due-to-the-wrong-leaves-on-the-tracks notices or whatever it was on the various scribbled signs on their big glass door this time. Did mention it was the third attempt to see the show to the not very interested gallerina sitting behind the desk, got a shrug of the shoulders in reply, not a hint of a “oh sorry about that”. They don’t really do friendly communication at Moosey’s but then that is about par for the course with East London’s current crop of art galleries (and yes we know Guts opened a show last Friday night, we’ve had hundreds of tier self-celebrating e.mails to tell us so…). So we got to see the Moosey group show, mostly painting, mostly that somewhere near slight cartoonish urban art  flavoured illustration and if that’s where your tastes lie then off you go and have a look, the show is on now and until January 28th – there were one or two decent pieces to be found (Guts do actually show some decent art, if only they weren’t so full of it, they are after all just another set of gatekeepers…) 

There’s a press preview for the London Art Fair later today  – it was today when this was written, it is the day after Art Fair preview day now, we’re juggling days and writing several pieces at the same time and yesterday we had been invited to come take a look, who knows why? Yesterday I wrote that right now, the prospect fills me with about as much excitement as next weekend’s Condo thing does, ninety-nine quid just to apply to take part in the London Art Fair, only for the rich kid galleries or the establishment old school then – yeah, I know, show some enthusiasm, wipe that cynical smile off your boat race, it does look like a cattle market though, I’ve not wanted to go for years and right now the journey from Hackney to Islington does look like a very long one. As for next weekend, well we’ve tried Condo every year since the whole rather underwhelming thing started and yes, we will probably head out again next weekend and who knows, maybe excitement will strike and the London art scene will ignite and there will be rainbows in the sky and wine will flow from the taps and the cats will wear leg warmers and garden over me and shall we have a question mark and end this paragraph now? 

 There are a number of openings in the Cork Street area that might just ignite the year a little this coming Thursday, but surely it shouldn’t take someone like Jeffrey Gibson and his Dreaming Of How It’s Meant To Be opening at Stephen Friedman‘s massive London gallery to kick things off? Surely there is more than just the big bad spaces of Mayfair to kick of 2024? If Ankka Kultys can’t be bothered with her usually rewarding Cacotopia this year then why not hand the empty space and the white walls over to someone else for a short sharp punk rock week of art? Surely she knows someone in East London who could fill the space with something exciting just to re-ignite things? A bit of left-field thinking rather that everything by the book. For all their faults, at least the YBAs made their own rules for a little while back there.

To be continued, off to the London Art Fair press preview…