Was that carefully placed Irn Bru can on top of the spray painted bit of brutalist concrete pavement furniture on the best bit of art seen on Frieze’s East London Sunday? It was placed so perfectly on that cold grey slab of weathered concrete street furniture, surely the precise placing was no accident on what was a grey drizzling damp overcast Sunday, a Sunday that had been designated Frieze’s East End Day. What’s going on there then? East London relegated to the Sunday before the week starts? East London’s once rather alive art scene has been kneeling for a good few years now and there seems little Frieze enthusiasm in the spaces we visited on a very Autumnal Sunday afternoon, even the Frieze website seems rather bored with the idea, just a tired list and a very short rather bland statement – “Galleries and non-profits located in the East End will be open to Frieze audiences, with many spaces hosting special events and private views”.  Just Thirteen Galleries listed, I guess just the ones who have stumped up the thousands of pounds required to take part in the fair itself? The spaces we visited seem quiet, is anyone in town yet? Are the locals that bothered? The weather is dull and well, we London dwellers can go on another day can’t we? I’m not hearing those loud in-town-for-Frieze types and yes they are a type, loud, overdressed, full of themselves, we can spot them (hear them!) and so can the gallery hosts who never want to speak to us local scumbags, straight out of the seats and head unburied from whatever the never smiling gallerinas do behind those computers that makes saying hello impossible at any other time of the year, up they jump as soon as they hear that Frieze visitor noise. Not that there’s many Frieze visitors in town yet, not judging my the (lack of) noise on East End Day, not on this relegated to the Sunday before Frieze Week spot. Hey! Come of, so cynical before we’ve even started, well no, I did head out, as I always do, full of hope, ready to be excited by art, ready to engage, to be engaged, to delight, I always leave this Hackney bunker full of hope when there’s art to be explored…

Several of the shows currently installed in galleries officially involved in this so called East End Day have been visited already, The Approach had a Saturday evening opening ahead of this Sunday thing. The meticulous detail of pavements and such underwhelmed, surely someone has to ask why? Why spend your time engaged in the meticulously painting of the surface detail of pavements or kitchen tops? Has anyone stopped and ask why? Berlin-based artist Helene Appel has an exhibition of new paintings in the normally rather rewarding Approach, she apparently wants us to consider the mundane things we ignore, but why? Meanwhile Amsterdam’s Germaine Kruip has a throwback of an installation called Two Circles, Mirrored in the small Annexe space of the gallery that “explores the interplay between a geometric form and its reflection. This mirror-polished stainless steel ellipse, positioned on the floor, casts a perfect circle of light onto the wall”, and well, ummm, is it 1972? It was kind of, ummmmm, well… I guess I kind of enjoyed it for a moment, a little more than the pavement paintings anyway. Saturday evening really did not reward like the afternoon visit to Peckham’s Safehouse had done, that South London visit to see the short sharp artist-led Collapse show has been fuelling us since Saturday lunch time, the paintings of Kika Sroka-Miller and especially Paul Sullivan, that fish of Nagasiddhi, Miranda Pissarides and her colour as well as Tracy McBride’s Elemental in the other half of space, Saturday afternoon at Peckham’s Safehouse is why I always leave here excited by the prospect of art – Collapse at Peckham’s Safehouse One, another rather powerful rather rewarding artist-led group show as we head into Frieze Week…

Hales have their London space open for East End Day, their current show has been open for a couple of weeks now and well, it has been visited already and our policy is to only cover things when we have something positive to offer in terms of what we’ve seen. When something excites we’ll shout about it, if it doesn’t then on the whole we’ll leave it alone. Hales say they are “delighted to announce Family Album, a solo exhibition by Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke. The artist’s sixth solo show with the gallery brings together new and historical works, highlighting a key arc of exploration in Locke’s practice — the iconography of royalty” and well let’s politely say we didn’t cover it when it opened, the Queen Mother and Princess Di didn’t do it for us. I’m guessing Union was open, been there and done that a couple of times now, should have gone again though, really should have ended the day with Susie Green’s excellent paintings, that would have been the thing to brighten East End Day, really should have gone back for more, those paintings are full of life… Susie Green’s Play Time at East London’s Union Gallery – they do demand a smile and yes, the colours are far far brighter than those that usually fill the darker world of dominance and submission..

As it was it was it was it was a Sunday afternoon rush from our Hackney bunker to Three Colts Lane and clutch of rather cold clinical galleries in that new built where Maureen Paley lives now, they feel like a visit to a new build hospital or they never feel that engaging. Into one of the two Project Native Informant spaces, there’s a group show on, there’s no labels, no information, no bits of paper, I can’t even see one of those annoying QR code things and yer man from the gallery is too busy cosying up to a couple of the Frieze-noise visitors as he glances rather unapprovingly in my direction, oh well, there’s one or two semi interesting pieces, nothing I desperately need to put a name to (and nothing to be found on the gallery’s website either, or at least there wasn’t when I looked).

Mother’s Tankstation is sandwiched between the two Project Native Informant spaces. Now this is a little more rewarding, Prudence Flint and a show of recent paintings Second Lesson, an exhibition that does at least want to engage. Prudence Flint, an artist based in Melbourne, has the room full of paintings from this year, beautiful palette, subtle, slight strange, otherly (and then you notice the dreamlike proportions, and then you see she’s been making the same set of strangely coloured slightly disturbing stylised paintings, dream states maybe? for years and yes, seeing them all together in one rather cold room like this, seeing the scale of them, the psyche, paintings that can be read, maybe subconsciously, in many way, if you feel inclined to do so, not sure that I am… 

Into the second of the two Project Native Informant spaces, the bigger one at the end of the clinically polite block, at least this second space comes with some information in the for of a piece of paper. Juliana Huxtable’s Heads and Tails In The Struggle For Iconicity is her third solo show in the space, apparently it “expands on the universe Huxtable previously created for her eponymous show Akimbo Spittle in 2022” – didn’t we see her in a show at No Parking? I don’t know, maybe the building is just too cold and clinical, I can;t really find a connection or a way in as “Huxtable disrupts the consolidation and static understandings of identity, representation and futurity. In a language of amorphicity, her celebrated practice – often collapsing painting, photography, text, performance and music – resides in semantic slippages, defying the didactic rubrics that attempt to define gender and race”, I can’t find a way into her cast of characters, her world building, “a universe of her own creation”. I’m not sure what I want here? I’m not sure what she wants from me? it does turn out to be the highlight of the shows we will visit today…

That’s a big piece of pop art flavoured street art over there, double back to the Maureen Paley Gallery door then. Maureen Paley has a long long East London history, it goes way back to Beck Road’s more edgy days, as an East London based artists who goes back as far, I’ve never felt that engage with any of her spaces, I can never tell if her current pace is open or not, it never looks like it wants you to come in. The current show has been open for a couple of weeks, actually Alexandra Bircken‘s Gebrochenes Pferd is spread over two galleries, it all happening over the road at Herald Street Gallery and well…

German for ‘broken horse’, the title of the exhibition announces a rupture and a feeling of unease with Alexandra Bircken‘s work. The same name is given to two works which echo one another in separate spaces. At Maureen Paley, we are confronted by a rocking horse in turned wood, its abdomen sliced down the middle and splayed open.it feels like some kind of prop for a fashion show, as do the graphics  the wall, sure that’s intended, it feels like a lot of fashion show references. There’s half a motorbike over in Herald Street, and some kind of engine  and you know what, I’m not sure I care enough about fetish of it all to write that much more about the metaphor and well there’s some photos down there if you want them (the lighting in Herald Street is not photo-friendly) 

Out of Herald Street, the street itself was once so alive in terms of art, almost all gone now, either to the sanitised new builds or, besides Herald Street Gallery itself, gone completely along with days when artist-led show would pop up in garages, even the street art art is looking a little tired, actually most of that seems old, slightly tagged but not evolving like it once did. IMT Gallery isn’t open, but then why should they be on a cold wet Sunday afternoon? Frieze has never tried ot engage with the samller galleries that can’t afford their prices, well they never did during our own Vyner Street days. Who knows if Sherbet Green is bothering today? They opened a show a couple of weeks ago, went to see it on the first Saturday after the Thursday night opening, well tried to, the times on the window said it should have been open, it wasn’t, annoying when they say they are, especially on the first weekend of a new show whe nyou’ve made the effort. I did bother to go back a second time, there was a couple of chairs in the middle of the room and well, some paintings on the wall, an artist they keep on showing… Off to Soft Openings, not sure what has happened to the usually rather positive Annka Kultys Gallery, in recent years that East London space has provide quite a few highlights during Frieze Week and in general – Sasha Stiles, Kate Bickmore, Nicole Coson, Marton Nemes and quite a few more, they’ve been quiet for what seems like months now, nothing much has happened there this year, “the gallery is currently closed for refurbishment” reads the website, that is a big shame, we’re missing it, hope it does reopen… past Poop or Plop or whatever the damn space is called, whaever it we won’t be going in there…

Soft Opening is another of those galleries that don’t like to tell you they are there or if they’re open, no sign or anything, if you didn’t know already then you wouldn’t know they are there and it does always feel like you’ve inconvenienced them when you ring their door bell. I suppose there’s something in the mystery of it all? What’s going on? The gallery is empty, that big space, those beautiful walls, one of the best East London spaces in terms of the actual building, (oh what we could so with this space!). Been to a lot of shows here, not wanted to cover many of them, there’s nothing here today? Oh no, hang on, fans, fans spinning for the ceiling… “For her forthcoming exhibition Fan Fiction at Soft Opening, Olivia Erlanger continues her ongoing research into appliances, presenting four large-scale ceiling fan sculptures whose blades have been altered to resemble butterfly wings…” Whoooopy bleedin’ do…. Maybe there’s a reason for East London’s relegation to the Sunday before Frieze week actually starts slot?   

Can we be bothered to walk up to heavily funded (well they make a point of displaying that Arts Council logo like some kind of badge of honour) hardly ever open whenever we walk past Auto Italia? The woman in the space follows us around like she thinking we’re going to trash the place, there’s a film running, one person is sitting there watching it, there’s no one else in here on Frieze East End Day. Auto Italia always feels like a very worthy space, they put on shows that go on for months. I don’t know, I’m sure there’s something interesting happening if I really want to make the effort to engage, it doesn’t really make me want to though, it always seems so… well… um… so damn boring! She seems relieved when we leave, “thanks for coming” she smiles. I guess the film might be worth looking up and watching on a PC, do I need ot sit in a gallery to view it? Shall we go give The Approach another go? It is only round the corner? Nah, let’s go home and make a Mixtape, it is only Sunday afterall and we still have Collapse in our heads, Frieze week doesn’t properly until tomorrow…  (sw)   

A Sunday afternoon slide show, do click on an image to see the whole thing, or to run the slide show….