It always feels good to step inside that first gallery of the year, kind of symbolic, a declaration of intent, that need to see art in the flesh, nothing more than a new year I know, and yes I was galleries last week, but, you know, out with the old and on with the new. There wasn’t much open on the second day of 2025, wasn’t really expecting to find anything, I wasn’t out looking, I was out leaving leaves (bypassing the galleries as it were) and just happened to spy that Shoreditch Modern was indeed open there on Sclater Street on a rather cold rather quiet second day of 2025. The gallery has been there for almost a year now (well the space has been a gallery for a lot longer), Shoreditch Modern took on the space back in February 2024, always good to see a new gallery surviving, and good to see them bothering to be committed and open, it isn’t easy running a gallery especially at this time of year (that’s experience speaking, been there, done that, got the scars). There’s a group show called On Gaia’s Skin on in the space at the moment, it opened back in December it is on for a few weeks yet (until January 11th), as far as I recall there has been nothing but group shows in the space so far, shows and hangs that maybe are, on the whole, a little too conservative and a touch too polite for their own good? There’s always an interesting piece or two though, always an artist or a painting or a piece you to want to know more about. 

This time the piece of art that grabs attention is a wall based piece from an artist called Paula Zvane. This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered the work of the London-based Latvian artist, it is maybe the first piece to really pull me in though, to want to stand there in front of it, to have a quiet conversation it, to hear it coming back at me, to want  to engage with the layers that you really want to reach out and physically touch rather than just mentally peel back (it really is a challenge to stop yourself touching the piece, I really wanted to, I almost did). I like the way she uses materials, that, in a positive way, you’re not quite sure what Paula Zvane is doing, that you need to take a side view of the canvas to try and get another angle, that it might be a painting, it might be a wall based tactile piece of installation that it might not be either of those things. Her seemingly disparate elements are brought together so well here in this one piece, there’s something almost ritualistic about it, about her work, I’d love to be a fly on the wall and watch her work without her knowing, is it impulse? There’s a lot of questions being thrown out my the piece, by the artist, there’s a lot of questions I want to throw at her about her practice, about this piece, although I probably like that I don’t know, that there is mystery, intrigue, I really like this piece, whatever it might be called (there was a label, blame the dame camera and not the operator, blurred label photos are really annoying). 

Hey, good start to the art year in terms of viewer art in the flesh, in terms of an artist to watch out for. Nice one Shoreditch Modern, good to find you open on the second day of the year…

Stop Press: This just in from the gallery – “I thought you might like to know that the piece you particularly liked is called ‘Earth Skin’ and is made from Kombucha scoby (a bacterial colony), graphite and oil on canvas”.

Paula Zvana – Instagram / website

Shoreditch Modern is found just off Brick Lane at 95 Sclater Street, London E1 6HR. Opening hours. Wednesday to Sunday. 12pm to 6pm. The current group show is on until January 11th