Today I have my curator’s hat on abd ny own trumpet to blow….

Cultivate makes a return to Columbia Road and that beautiful old East London greengrocers shop that is now Shipton Street Gallery this March for a short sharp (somewhat maximalist) group show. Once again curated by Cultivate founders Sean Worrall and Emma Harvey, another artist-led show (we must be near 200 of them by now), the show will open on Thursday evening March 7th, it will run through International Women’s Day on March 8th, then on to the weekend, the Columbia Road Sunday Flower Market and all that that brings and will then end on Sunday 10th March at 5pm

An ambitious eight artist show in a rather intimate space including Julia Maddison’s take over of the gallery’s front window.

Artist line up

YASMIN GRANT
SOFIA MARTINS GRAY
SEAN WORRALL
ROSEMARY JANE CRONIN
MIA JANE HARRIS
JULIA MADDISON
JACK FLORISH
FRANCESCA ALAIMO
EMMA HARVEY
ANDREE ADLEY

The show is an artist-led affair (just as as all Cultivate shows are) . Right now the East London art scene is plagued by a new set of gate keepers, places where artists could once do things on their own terms are rare now, gone are the wonderful old warehouses, the cheap rent of streets like Vyner Street, the new gatekeepers are if anything, worse than the old ones, the new ones come with a new set of art school indoctrinations, with firmly closed doors to almost everyone, with ageist attitudes. middle class privilege, East London is not the artist-friendly place it once was.

My thinking on More Cake? is kind of multi-pronged, it is essentially just a throwaway title for a group show, no big deal really it is a question though . It maybe is about people sitting back, eating cake, just drinking coffee at Broadway Market (or just painting their day away maybe?) while all the utterly frustrating crap is happening all around the world, all that stuff that we can mostly do nothing about but maybe should be doing something about? What can we do? We can’t, what would we like to (is that a question as well) It is also a bit about it being my birthday (on International Women’s Day I might add, not that I consider being born of that day any kind of contribution to the day) and as depressing as that is in terms of getting old in an ageist world, I need to embrace it disgracefully rather than just fade away, in my head I’m still 27, not about to apply for a bus pass. All that and doing a lot of thinking right now with ongoing eye issues and how many more times will my eye let me do this? One eye left an an operation on it next month this might just be the very last time I can see to so this, there’s nothing to worry about so they say but they said that about the other one an that didn’t end well, it does make you think So yes the cake isn’t all upbeat, but it is, it , more cake, let them eat cake, i like cake, I love cake i love painting, I love paint as thick as icing, the day before they cut in you’ll find be talking to Turner at the Tate, could be worse I could be in Gaza. More cake? (sw)