Gathering Mythologies: Waymarkers without Memory – Hypha Studios at Netil House, Hackney, London E8 – These new gate keepers bother me, Hypha seem to be hoovering up pretty much all of the very few potential art spaces left in this much gentrified town, there was a time when you could find an empty space and do a deal and put on a show, the evils of Appear Here pretty much killed that with all their red tape and putting their prices way way (way) up. Hypha claim to be a little more artist friendly, the antidote even, they actually offer free space, but I don’t know, they just seem like yet another layer of gatekeeper and appear to be taking every space there is (they boast of nine exhibitions happening during the coming Frieze week), all good you might say but hey, if you don’t fit their narrow agenda then don’t bother, indeed, ask them a question they don’t like and rather than reply, they’re going to just block you. Not that Joseph Winsborrow and Christina Cushing, curators of this rather enjoyable show have anything to do with Hypha other that being a couple of artists who got past their gate and having done so turned what is a rather cold looking space in the rather not very engaging uninviting thing that is Hackney’s Netil House these days into something rather engaging.  

A one time 60s or maybe 70s almost utilitarian almost typical monster, the one time home of Hackney Technical College and a now rather gentrified or hipsterfied or somethingfied home to the beard growing buyers of ten quid a go Scotch Eggs or over priced coffee shots from far far too many places around what Broadway Market has now become, oh this was such a good place to live and work back there not so very long ago and none of this has much to do with Gathering Mythologies: Waymarkers without Memory other than it being an art show that overcomes where it is and really does work so so well. Or maybe it works because of where it is? There in that big unfriendly block just off the old sheep lane at the end of the grazing rights that were London Fields. Wonder if the curators know they’re almost on a ley line between the still very black door of what once was Throbbing Gristle’s Death studios and that house that still has the Psychic TV cross embedded in the faded black door on the adjacent Beck Road? 

So we’re on the ground floor of a 70s concrete industrial office block complex, the modest room the show itself is actually in is little more than a shell, a stripped bare concrete and breeze block space. The fact that the Autumn’s bright afternoon sun is streaming in through the big front windows and heating the place rather invitingly helps add to the vibe, and it is very much a vibe in here, a spirit, an escape – this is an art exhibition that not only looks good, it sounds quietly good and smells rather good as well –

“Gathering Mythologies: Waymarkers Without Memory, an exhibition expanding the realms of spiritual mysticism and esoteric ritual. Featuring works by Nora Bzheta, Sara Christova, Christina Cushing, Ume Dahlia, Layan Harman, Tom Sewell and Joseph Winsborrow – Gathering Mythologies celebrates multifaceted approaches to our amorphous and permeable heritages”.

This is a really well curated well put together exhibition, an almost seamless show – films, projections, installations, wall pieces, sculpture, video, assemblages, all working together as one strong whole, nothing jarring, nothing fighting with anything else for attention, no arguments between the peices, art existing in a space united, sound that doesn’t impose as much as it quietly embraces, the whole exhibition embraces.

Really don’t want to be picking out any particular piece, it all works so well as one whole, as one thing, have to though, do so like the crystals and volcanic ash of Sara Christova’s piece that’s partly film projection low down on the wall and partly floor installation – no, wrong to pick out pieces, for once everything is to like, nothing is filler. It might have been the sunshine, it might have been the smell, the atmosphere, the organic openness of it all, the transcendence, the “speculative interpretations of ancient beliefs, ritual practice, and communal folklore” in amongst the almost brutalist concrete – see, we really are talking ley lines –

“Gathering Mythologies is an invitation to embrace the esoteric as a radical space of possibility – one that honours diversity, fluidity, and the interconnectedness of all things. It challenges us to question whose myths we uphold, whose knowledge we revere, and how we might open ourselves to new ways of seeing, being, and believing”.

It was almost an oasis of an art show, normally I’d run a mile from something like this, this time it felt real, this time it made me park by cynical smile outside for a few minutes, it made me feel rather pleased to have gone to see it, I might just go back again next weekend, and maybe the weekend after as well, as art show that engages so well… (sw)

Gathering Mythologies is on in Netil House until 3rd November, the Netil House address is 1 Westgate St, Hackney, E8 3RL but really you need to go to Bocking Street on the other side of the building where you can walk up the street and directly into the exhibition directly from the street. The exhibition is open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, Midday until 6pm (11am until 5pm on Sundays)  

Previously on these pages: ORGAN THING: The Stinging Netil, a beautifully anarchic art fair, ten years on…

As always do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the modest slide show…