Never mind the Agapanthus that may be lurking out there waiting to pounce, or the dream police who are coming to get you, on with this thing called the London Gallery Weekend, although so far several of the galleries explored over the last few days are either not part of it or actively excluded from it or just didn’t bother with what looks like little more than some rather dull pastel green and salmon pink graphics and a lot of art establishment self-congratulation via the thing the kids call social media.  

Where were we? Part three, Friday afternoon and a new show opening at the always challenging, often very rewarding, sometime infuriating Annka Kultys Gallery, one of my favourite of the current East London art spaces. Hey, before we start, I know, I can be rather cynical, we really can’t take any of this for granted though, all these galleries I mean. On any given weekend, or most later in the week weekdays for that matter (art doesn’t tend to do Mondays or indeed Tuesdays), you can just walk in to most of these spaces and be left in peace to just explore art free or charge, who needs all this hype this week? Really not sure about this so called Gallery Weekend? What is the difference? We can do this exploring lots of galleries thing pretty much any week and as frustrating as the galleries can be in terms of those of us who are working artists based here in London – these spaces on the whole seem to feel the grass is always greener on the other side and the gatekeepers both old and new can be (very) infuriating (even more so with the new ones) when it comes to those of us on their doorsteps and yes it still feels like we London artists mostly need to do it all ourselves (when we can find the ever more expensive to rent spaces to actually do it ourselves), these semi-establishment or indeed full on establishment galleries, as much as they ignore most things under their noses, can’t be taken for granted. In the last three or four days we’ve just walked into and explored art in something liked thirty galleries without being asked for a penny in terms of entry fee. Sure, sometimes it is hard to work out where they actually are and if they’re actually open, but they are there and they do open their doors and you can just walk in and that surely is something to be celebrated? Art galleries are brilliant places, this ever evolving network of galleries can’t just be taken for granted, they need to be celebrated. 

Celebrate yes, but questioned as well, we’re not just here to do some kind of box-ticking one-line London art round up. Why do we see so few London-based artists in these establishment London galleries? It is great to see these artists from all over the world, but maybe a tiny bit more balance? Enough, on with it, on with the box-ticking and the round up and the exploring and the agapanther beasts and the feral cats and a rat or two…      

Friday afternoon, escape the studio, avoid the Man, off on a post run, paintings off to new homes in Huddersfield, Hastings and somewhere in Texas today. The Post Office is around the corner from the aforementioned always challenging often very rewarding Annka Kultys Gallery, there’s a new show opening there this afternoon. I do like this gallery, I do like going to the space at the back of that dubious industrial estate, I do like fighting the big metal door that scrapes across the floor in such a dramatic way, an entrance almost feels like a performance, all heads turn as the floor screams or maybe the door does…     

“The entire world has been turned into a well-fitted mask for the human face,” reflects theorist Carl Olsson in his essay “Peak Face” (2023). “The world is a Facehugger.” From the Cambrian Explosion to deep fakes, Olson analyses the history and seeming end of the face as the ultimate interface, given the ease with which this platform can be co-opted, manipulated and artificed through digital technologies. From this POV, it’s as if the ultimate paradigm of our individuality our face—has been stripped of any currency at all. But perhaps there’s something else of value in the anonymous swarm intelligence of a post-facial future?”

Annka Kultys Gallery is presenting Austrian artist Christiane Peschek and a show called The Girls Club; “a suite of digitally-manipulated selfies that reflect the uncanny powers of a femme face that refuses recognition. Thirteen meticulously-crafted hand-dyed silk works mounted to aluminum frames are enshrined by a black vinyl wall installation that bears the phrase “I’m just the idea of a girl”. The images, which are all characterised by deep-fried edits to a series of self-portraits taken on the artist’s iPhone, collapse the face into an abstract field of material data, one that can refuse the superstructures of capital and identity that augured it”.

And so for we find a room full or identically sized pieces of well… Well, what are they? What are we looking at? Uniformly hung very (very) out of focus faces, the same face repeated, the colour of the lips maybe suggest a female, well we know they are selfies so we know the gender of the subject, these are self portraits, striking self portraits, very blurred, very out of focus focused pieces, striking pieces, bold, powerful pieces…     

“Using silk as a carrier for my images is a reference to the human skin,” Peschek explains in an interview. “Its fragile and delicate characteristic is a beautiful contrast to the hard surface of the touchscreen.” 

“With a background in advertising, the artist has a keen understanding of material driven affect, even while her work takes aim at larger social, cultural, and technological systems that underpin the consumption of images online. With The Girls Club, an ongoing project since 2019, Peschek focuses on the eternal quest for self-presentation within virtual social environments. Drawing on photo editing and retouching tools, Peschek merges her own selfies with an ever-expanding archive of imagery culled from various social media feeds”.

…bold, powerful, striking in terms of being in a (strong) uniform (formal) line on a (very) white wall gallery and yes, throwing out questions about art (once again), about the function of the art gallery (one of the perpetual questions at Annka Kultys), questions about life, about the way we see ourselves and others, how we present ourselves as people (as artists?), the expectancies, the reality, real people? Deep fakes? The source image in question is the selfie, an imaged blurred beyond recognition, identity fractures and splits into multitudes. It isn’t so much what we’re looking at it or if we like what we see, this isn’t a nice landscape with a tree and ans some blue sky, it is about the questions we as viewers are being asked. Yes indeed, once again a show at Annka Kultys Gallery that has you questioning what you want from art, what art is about as technology takes a tighter grip and the POV slang of the Tik Tok generation becomes the accepted norm. 

Here in The Girls Club the selfie is indeed less about self and more of an abstract gaze, you are kind of thinking that it all should just all be on an Instagram feed fighting the algorithmic frustration and the shadow bans with the rest of us? No, this (really) needs to be on a gallery wall. This is pushing the image to the extreme, and that in itself, that is, as an artistic statement, strong. I guess we could ask how much is left once we have had that initial look? Are we just going to swipe on to the next one? Move on to the next gallery? Will these images stay with us? Is there anything more here than that instant moment, will we even mark these pieces as favourites to go back and look again later? But that surely misses the point, surely it can’t just be a question of do we like the image or not?   

So gargantuan mouths or blurs where we know the mouth is, Cheshire cat got the bird? Sinister? Maybe? Enticing? Could be, but that doesn’t matter. Eyes always shut? Or are they? And what of the Girls Club? over to SissyFit? This is ours now?  “A polyvocal war cry for something beyond” so Peschek says as she becomes image as well as maker of image and do we start to become uncomfortable? Have I looked at her for maybe longer than I should have done? Is she looking at me? Or is that jsut another distraction from the real question here?

“Soon, we might be able to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, earnestly, ‘Do we really need this?” Olsson proclaims his vision of a post-facial future. Peschek’s girls critically anticipate that mirror stage; these “supra-individual” portraits refuse the notion of the bounded self as much as they reject the genre of portraiture, ultimately delivering an exit strategy from the superstructures that got us here in the first place. To become unrecognizable is also to become ungovernable; to become girl, in Peschek’s distorted photographic image, is to become an edgeless swarm that critiques its confines while imagining worlds beyond representation”.

And that is it yet again in here, in this particular gallery – questions, debates, a little more than just another picture on another gallery wall. Truth is I don’t really like this show that much, then again, I really really (really) like this show but that doesn’t matter, it isn’t about liking or disliking, it is about the questions, the debate, the things those images, those selfies, throw at you the viewer and you can’t walk away and say you didn’t like it or make quips about Batman as you tick it off the list of galleries you’ve been to on this London Gallery Weekend.

Christiane Peschek is an artist broadly interested in questions of identity and aesthetics online, the fact that she is hanging on the wall of a gallery looking at us is important, it might not be a visually exciting show (then again it might be) but that is;nt the point here. I really like this show and these (rows of) images.

There is also the matter of American Reflexxx, a film running on a screen in the gallery, “a jarring social experiment and durational performance video by the reality artist Signe Pierce that is running on the screen but that’s a whole other big piece in itself and as hard as is to drag myself away from the screen and the reactions and just one more minute, and yes it does make a difference watching it in a gallery rather than on YouTube. There isn’t the time today though, this really demand another visit and full attention, come back when the head-peckers and the painting muse aren’t demanding I get back to the studio and finish that painting or at least go on with it. Can’t fill my head with the film and those bloody knees and that blue dress and that mask as well as Christiane Peschek and (all) her questions. Signe Piece will have to wait, another time…

Out of the 80s flavoured mini industrial estate just off the rush of the Hackney Road, resist the temptation of Soft Opening and the show in there until tomorrow, there’s a pressing need to get back to the studio and work, I only came out to post out today’s art packages and catch the new show at Annka kultys Gallery, well the space is a healthy stone’s throw away from the Post Office so tease two birds with one piece of bread and yes, maybe a quick visit to The Approach before more paint is thrown or at least spilt. 

Off we go then, off to The Approach, off past Auto Italia, another gallery that’s been where it is for years now, another that doesn’t appear to be part of this rather selective Gallery Weekend thing – did talk to one long-standing highly respected Gallery curator who could be argued is more establishment and has more old school history that most of the others put together, apparently they turned him down when he asked about being part of the Weekend, more about that in part five or maybe six, we are only just starting here – there’s been a rather rewarding Karol Radziszewski exhibition on at Auto Italia since early April, it goes on until June 9th, really should say something before it closes, really should have done so already, not today though, there is no time today. Quick look at the new show that has just opened at The Approach and then back to work before the painting muse has another hissyfit and kicks over the cans. Actually shall we save The Approach and the Adelaide Cioni exhibition that just opened for Part four of the London Gallery Weekend alongside a last look at was still on Friday current show at Nicoletti? More in a moment, more in a bit, must paint, really must… (sw)

The Annka Kultys Gallery is at Unit 9, 472 Hackney Road, London, E2 9EQ. No longer up those stairs above that shop on the main street, you now need to go around the back through the red gates to the small industrial estate behind the shops, the gallery is to your left at the back in the far corner. Do we still need to say this? Annka moved two or three years ago now.

Previous Annka Kultys Gallery coverage on these pages (there has been rather a lot of it)

Precious London Gallery Weekend coverage – London Gallery Weekend pt.2 – Rosemary Cronin’s boots steal Transition’s Hard Candy show over here in Hackney… / London Gallery Weekend pt.1 – the paint is alive at Dessy Baeva’s Portals show at Hackney’s Lot Projects, and not a Cobra in sight…

And as we always say at this point, do click on an image to see the whole image or to run the fractured slide show…