Condo time once again and as someone else once said, I am a lifelong aficionado of rabbit holes, wardrobes with unexpected back doors, looking-glasses, and irresistibly tempting yellow brick roads or maybe just finding something new in a an art gallery. What do we want from Condo? Something different maybe? Something from somewhere else, something that we probably won’t see in these spaces hosting this year’s guest galleries outside of the Condo month? Condo London 2025 opened last Saturday, last Saturday was such an awfully dull day, the most grey of grey days, a cold hearted colourless day, a two pairs of gloves because one pair simply wasn’t enough kind of day, it was not an afternoon to go tramping around East London galleries but hey, dedication is required, art is not a fair weather sport, rain can’t stop play, well it can, there are limits, those limited weren’t quite reached last weekend, not quite, you better make use of all this and go and see it all yourselves, I don’t do all this for my good health…

Off then, off to Minerva Street and the space that has been Soft Opening for quite some time now. What is Condo? Condo is an collaborative exhibition or event that brings together 49 galleries across 22 London spaces. Now back to hopefully back to an annual event after last year’s post Covid return, Condo (with the ever annoying website) kind of kickstarts the London art year (alongside the London Art Fair) and this year Condo is happening between 18th January and 15th February, although to really get the best out of it you really had to focus on the opening preview weekend of Saturday and Sunday 18th/19th January when all the galleries involved were all committed to being open at the same time from Midday until 6pm on both days. It does tend to feel a little half-hearted in terms of the commitment of the galleries after the first weekend, the first weekend tends to be when everything is open and focussed and you now and again bump into other people trying to make sense of the style over substance map (why can’t it be both?) or the website on their phones, people tend to come out on the first weekend.  I will admit the website does normally look good, the design and the look is part of Condo, just as a piece of functional information it is rather annoying, this year’s it is the best so far in terms of looks, I rather like it this year, that is probably a first (personally I’ve got out a good old fashion Biro and made some good old fashioned plain and simple notes in a notebook).  The twenty-two galleries hosting the London leg of Condo this year are all hosting until mid February, you’ll just need to check the individual gallery’s opening times after the first weekend… 

Some of the galleries involved are hosting their own shows alongside their Condo guests, sometimes obviously so, sometimes rather vaguely and of course as we are on what will end up being a more than five mile afternoon walk around the East London side of Condo, we will be dropping in on other things that are happening in galleries and spaces that aren’t involved in the event along the way on this opening day of Condo London 2025. Off then, off to explore the East End’s part of the gallery-sharing thing that’s spread across different parts of London and features participants from Guatemala, Lebanon, Paris, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and quite a few more places.

Off to the nearest participating gallery, off to Minerva Street just off the Hackney Road and the space that has been Soft Opening for quite some time now. The gallery is Involved for a second time this year, the black door that secretly hides the gallery is as locked as ever, you’d think they’d maybe unlock or maybe put a sign outside for this weekend but no, you still have to wonder if you are welcome, if the space is actually open, you have to press the buzzer and wait for someone to answer and if you didn’t already know, you’d have no clue that it was an art gallery behind that unfriendly door or that they actually want you to come inside..

Soft Opening Gallery took part in Condo for the first time in 2024 and this year the space is hosting New York gallery Derosia. Soft Opening’s Condo exhibition might be something entitled Oes with Works Like Esses, a show that finds most of the main gallery space in darkness and those big beautiful gallery walls once again empty, the show actually features a new group of relatively small metal sculptures in bronze and silver by the London-based artist Joanne Burke, presented within a set of glass cases that give the whole thing a feel of jewellery in a jewellery shop. They are intricate pieces, are they sculptures? is jewellery? Does it really matter what they are? it looks like East End tom foolery to me, it does rather feel like looking in a jewellery shop window, it feels like craft, nothing wrong with craft but tom (or smartarse Cockney Rhyming Slang) isn’t really what I’m wanting in a big white cube of a gallery like this, (look at those empty walls!). Actually is this the Condo part or is the Condo bit just the Derosia Gallery bit that’s being hosted in the other smaller mostly never used rather decent room? Things aren’t that clear (and that room never ever seems to be used outside of Condo which really is, when East London space is in such short supply for those of us based here, quite a shame). There’s bits of dyed fabric made into pieces of framed art in the smaller room hanging next to black words on white canvas, apparently the work of artists Kern Samuel (the textile pieces) and Gene Beery (the words). I guess there might ba craft and process link between the two rooms and the textiles based pieces that kind of almost interact with the jewellery? I have to admit, speaking as a one time textile design student who’s been based little more than a stones throw away from the gallery for way too long now, Kern Samuel’s work kind of looked like little more than lots of things I might have seen or indeed done way way back there in my first year of art school and as for the wordery on canvas of Gene Beery, well can we just politely leave it with you and wonder what actually warranted shipping it all the way from New York? I mean it is actually saying that much or challenging in any kind way is it? We’re hardly talking radical commentary or challenge here are wee? A fifteen year old canvas that just had “A Pipe” painted on it? Really? You come all the way from New York and that’s really all you’ve got? Not the greatest of starts then, oh well, off to The Approach, let’s see what they have this year…

Back along the Hackney Road, past the sign for Annka Kultys Gallery and that Sara Sadik show but we’ve already been there, past the door to Plop and all their looking down their noses from the top of their stairs, their you-can’t-come-in-you-don’t-look-like-you’re-interested-in-art attitudes (they never did have the guts to respond to the polite e.mail asking about not letting me in because I apparently looked like I was only there for their cheep opening night beer, aloof cowardly fresh out of art school types who really were asking for a slap, and yes, I will keep mentioning it, I detest the way some of East London art spaces just don’t want to engage, the way they make judgement calls, they way they look at you like you’re shit on their shoes, it doesn’t happen in the West End, just here in the East), on past the unwelcoming Plop, on past another Endless paste up, they really are endless, past that yellow post-it not that The Black Stone left on a billboard under the railway bridge, on up the Bishop’s Way once again, on past Auto Italia and Alex Margo Arden’s Safety Curtain, we’ve covered that one already as well, it opened earlier in the week, really must go back and see it without the opening night crowd, not today through, today Condo is calling, The Approach Gallery is calling… 

The Approach gallery is above the pub of the same name, this time they’re hosting two guest galleries, Philipp Zollinger (Zürich) and Sophie Tappelner (Vienna). The Zürich gallery is presenting Renée Levi (b. 1960) and Cassidy Toner (b. 1992) in the main room. Levi has apparently been questioning the medium of painting for the last thirty years as she “investigates colour, the application of paint, it’s body and it’s space on various image carriers as well as installations”, there’s a number of loosely stretched canvases on the wall as well as one standing in the middle of the room (apparently to break up the space). Levi, born in 1960, in Istanbul, grew up in Aargau. Today she lives and works in Basel, the Swiss curator is keen to tell me she’s studied architecture (at the HTL Muttenz/Baseland) as if that gives her some kind of authority in terms of how she’s breaking up the space. Let me politely say I’m underwhelmed with both the breaking up of the gallery space and the rather crudely unconvincing marks on the canvases. The curator is not that interested in my questioning the points apparently being made, he seems rather annoyed and quite honestly I haven’t got the time or the inclination to comment further here. Meanwhile, on the plinths in the main gallery space we find Baltimore-born, Basel-based artist Cassidy Toner’s “playful practice that uses humour and self-deprecation as a strategy for negating the pressures and logic of the art world”, and well, “ceramic sculptures that mimic a cartoon character’s motion…” and oh well, we’ll politely leave the room and wonder if the small Annexe part of the gallery has something more rewarding or engaging to offer? 

The Annexe space of the Approach is hosting the Sophie Tappeiner Gallery from Vienna. it all seems rather nice, a presentation of work by an artist called Anna Zemánková (1908–1986). A rather polite exhibition of framed satin pieces that are almost collages by the artist, her first in the UK, something that follows her presentation at the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. They’re all very “nice” and yes, enjoyable, and yes, she has quite a story, the respect is deserved, but is this really what Condo is about? Maybe it is? I mean has anyone really made any great sweeping statement about what Condo is actually supposed to be about? Are we maybe kind of wrong to be expecting something a little more challenging? A little closer to some kind of right here right now? A forward looking cutting edge? I mean, these pieces are kind of politely delightful, they kind of feel like something that should be in a side room in an art museum, but then, as one gallery owner at the London Art Fair pointed our recently, what do I know… Next.

Off to the galleries of Three Colt Lane, via Herald Street Gallery (who aren’t involved in Condo this time around) where we find Sang Woo Kim‘s solo show The Seer, The Seen is still on, feels like a lifetime ago that we covered that one – East London’s Thursday night’s art openings, was Sang Woo Kim’s show at Herald Street Gallery really all there was? Good to briefly catch it again before it ends I guess, it goes on until the first day of February if you’re interested (that link you just passed will tell you more). Over to the row of what still feel like new galleries at the foot of that Three Colt Lane new build then. Why is it called Three Colt Lane?

Why is it called Three Colt Lane A.I? “Three Colt Lane is likely named as such because it could have once been a semi-rural area where there were three young male horses (called colts) grazing in a field, with the “lane” part indicating a pathway through that area; essentially, the name is a visual reference to the sight of three colts in a field” – I guess A.I doesn’t know, that was kind of like your mate in the pub who can’t admit he doesn’t know so makes up any old East End pony and trap (crap).

Those new spaces of Three Colt Lane still feel a little soulless, a little lacking in character, a touch clinical, they don’t feel broken in yet. Mother’s Tankstation are billing their part of Condo London 2025 as a collaborative presentation with P·P·O·W, from New York, a gallery that in turn has rather stood out at Frieze in recent years, the prospect of a P·P·O·W presentation is rather exciting. The work of Erin M. Riley is hanging the space, this looks good…

“Erin M. Riley’s title for her first solo exhibition with Mother’s Tankstation, Look Back At It, is as apparently (correspondingly) simple as it is confounding”. Textile wall hangings appear to be quite thing in East London this January, we’re still feeling good about Taylor Silk’s Soft Domme opening night at London Field’s Wilton Way Gallery earlier this month.

There’s a lot to unpack (or maybe to decode?) with these big Erin M. Riley pieces, they are immediately powerful, exciting, is exciting the right term? There a lot being said here, a lot coming at you at once and before anything else, they are rather deliciously crafted, meticulous large-scale tapestries that depict or maybe suggest the intimate? The erotic? Something raw maybe? Imagery that touches upon more than one dynamic, upon relationships or are they fantasies? Something deeper? Darker? Sexual violence? Trauma? And if so then who’s trauma? No, I’m not sure if these pieces are exciting? They are exciting but that’s not the right word. They’re certainly powerful, a little too dark to excite? More of a challenge, a difficult set of conversations or observations. She’s apparently “collaging personal photographs, images sourced from the internet, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera to create her compositions”. They are exciting in terms of the craft of it all, the art, the making, the doing. Complex tapestry pieces both in terms of their actual stitch by stitch construction and in terms of the reading. 

Who is she? Erin M. Riley (b.1985, Cape Cod, MA) now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, her work isn’t often seen over here, this show is on until March 1st, if you have the time then it really is worth making the effort to go see it in real life, to go stand in front of these pieces, to let them talk to you. Hey, has this year’s Condo just sprung into life, at last, something to think about, to want to engage with and on several levels, pieces that will stick around in your head, something about looking back? What were we looking back at? Why? Primal textile screams? Do I like this show? I’m not sure, is it something to ‘like’? It is a powerful show, in many ways a challenging show, is it to like though? A strong show, and a screen shot of a webcam image as a very big tapestry or a weaving? Brilliant! 

Project Native Informant exists in two spaces either side of Mother’s Tankstation, their Condo presentation this year is in the smaller of their two spaces, they’re hosting Bangkok’s Nova Contemporary – “Nova Contemporary is pleased to present Pillows, a duo exhibition of works by Pam Virada and James Prapaithong“, Something to do with “framing the gallery as a domestic refuge, the exhibition explores how interiority, both spatial and psychological, harbours secrets, comforts, and memory”, I’m not really seeing a “domestic refuge”, neither the nice enough paintings of Prapaithong or Virada’s sconce decorative light fixture sculptures (crafted from found trays) are engaging with me enough to demand I hang around for long enough to attempt to find something. Meanwhile in the bigger of the two Project Native Informant spaces at the end of the block there’s a piece called Doesn’t Work, would it be too flippant of me to say it certainly doesn’t? The piece that doesn’t work is part of a show called doesn’t work, a solo show from Phung-Tien Phan, mostly installation pieces, a video screen showing something or other, a toy dog? I can’t really say anything made me want to stick around for too long, I’m sure it all means something to the artist or the galleries involved, there’s probably some deep meaningful reason for it all, I found myself really not bothered enough to try and read into Phan’s experimental incongruity and work out what the reason was… 

The Maureen Paley Gallery is also once again part of Condo over at the gallery’s Studio M space where Air De Paris gallery, from Paris obviously, is being hosted. The main Maureen Paley Gallery, also part of that Three Colts Lane block has just seen the opening of a new Liam Gillick show called The Sleepwalkers. We’ll get to Studio M later, for now we’re checking out The Sleepwalkers and following the big line of text on the walls of the space – “Maureen Paley is pleased to present Liam Gillick’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, The Sleepwalkers. The exhibition features five artworks from the 1990s and 2000s and a recent film from 2021 shot in Korea. All the works stem from his interest in the aesthetics of our socio-political infrastructure – the zones of strategy, negotiation, projection, and scenario-thinking – that are the backdrop to daily life in post-industrial society” – all of which means we have a cardboard box full of different coloured ribbons (or at least different coloured lengths of ribbon-like fabric that wouldn’t really dress an obviously naked emperor), a grey plastic kitchen sink washing up bowl full of who knows what and a clear glass vase half full of water (half empty?). The three works in the main gallery are bound together by Introduction (2002), a text that wraps mid-height around the walls while three barely off the floor plinths carry the afore mentioned pieces that apparently “relate to an ongoing critique of systems of mediation and soft control within a neo-liberal context”. Actually it isn’t a washing up bowl, we’re looking at old clothing, fake snow, flashlights, papers, cigarettes in an airport security tray, whoooooopie bleedin’ do! A piece from 1994 that “focuses on the role of an advisor or political strategist, comprising mid-century men’s business apparel heaped into an airport security tray along with fake snow, working torches, cigarette packets, and various strategy papers”, looks like nothing more than a pile of junk in a washing up bowl that someone left on ther floor of the gallery to me. As for the ribbons in a box, that’s a piece called (The What If? Scenario) Spatial Definition Device #2 (1996), a cardboard box full of many coloured ribbons, “one of a number of artworks proposed that offered the tools to create permeable borders or loosely define zones of activity”. Art really can be so up itself sometimes. “Liam Gillick (b. 1964, Aylesbury, UK) lives and works in New York, USA. Working across diverse forms, including installation, video and sound, as a theorist, curator and educator as well as an artist, his wider body of work includes published essays and texts, lectures, curatorial and collaborative projects” – I wonder if we’re going to pass a pub before we make it to the next gallery? I could do with a pint. 

Off we go again, we’ll leave Three Colts Lane and the mystery of the name and leave a leaf, a #43Leaves piece, leave it hanging on a nail that was already there, hanging on a wall by a railway bridge in East London, a piece painted on found unwanted discarded material picked up off the street, just as all the #43Leaves pieces always are. A quick back of an envelope count up has it at getting on for around three thousand leaves left on the street for people to just take now – that is what they are left for, for people to just take should they wish to. enough of that though, enough of blowing my own trumpet.

On we go exploring East London’s art, exploring Condo and whatever else we find on the way to the next Condo host, on past the London Glam of a shuttered-on-a-Saturday-afternoon nail and beauty salon, past a rather black rather big idling tour bus with those ever so nice Kray twins emblazoned on the side. We know they were nice boys, the foot model told us so. The foot model would come into Cultivate regularly when the gallery was based on Vyner Street, she’d been a a foot model in the 50s and once we know that that is what she became know as (we never did find out what her real name was), she was a model “back when I was still good looking”, and she’d often tell us what nice boys the twins were, she’d tell us all kind of tales, now and again she’d buy as small piece of art “as a treat rather than pay the gas bill, they’re not going to bleedin’ well cut me off at my age are they dear and I like to have art on me walls”. Her feet were regularly photographed for shoe catalogues apparently, I’m not sure the shoe model would feel welcome in any of the galleries were exploring today, our policy was to always have the door open and if the shoe model wanted a sit down and a cup of tea when she came in then fine, she’d always have a story, surely the people who cone in are a big part of running an art gallery? The engagement? The conversation, the people who lived around here for years being made to feel welcome? On with it all, on past the big black Kray Twins tourist bus, an “educational tour” apparently (what would the Richardson lot say?).

On past those two giant advert hoardings by the Blind Beggar pub that are currently home to two big Stanley Donwood paintings that feature as the covers of the two most recent albums from The Smile (Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke’s Logical Absurdity down London’s Cork Street, an intriguing exhibition, intriguing in a rather different way, an unreal very real way…), turn on to the Mile End Road and head for the next Condo gallery. It really is a disgusting day, cold grey duller than dull day, the light is grim, the resulting photographs are grim, the streets look tired, so do the people and we’re heading for Carlos/Ishikawa Gallery where, as part of Condo, they’re hosting Jason Haam Gallery (Seoul) in one of the gallery spaces.

There’s something East London old school about going to Carlos/Ishikawa Gallery, it feels like a throwback to an East London gallery from twenty years ago, hidden off the Mile End road in the far corner of a really run down potholed yard behind a big Chinese Supermarket that itself is in a building that looks like it might once have a been a library or a school or anything but a supermarket.  You’d never know there was a gallery in that corner, no sign to point the way, it doesn’t look like it would be too wholesome to go there in the dark, there it is, right in the corner, beyond the broken cars and the couriers on their bikes waiting to deliver the next food orders, watch out for those bikes in that entrance, they’re not stopping for you. Hey, we haven’t seen anyone with one of those yellow Condo maps that are piled up in each gallery since the start of the afternoon, there’s not exactly thousands of us tramping the East London streets following the trail on this, the first day (we will find things a little busier in the more central Shoreditch area later on). The Condo bit is to the side in a small space where Jason Haam Gallery is showing work by Jihyoung Han, Jungwook Kim, and Mike Lee, Carlos/Ishikawa itself is showing work by Moka Lee and Sable Elyse Smith (maybe that’s part of Condo as well? It is all kind of vague, does it matter?). All three shows are opening today, Moka Lee‘s exhibition is occupying the nice big main gallery space, there’s a Sable Elyse Smith film running in the back cinema area and considering this is the opening day of all three of these shows as well Condo itself, beside the two people from Jason Haam gallery, for most of the time I’m in here there’s no one else much checking things out. is this Condo opening day a bit of a non event? Yes, i know, the weather isn’t great, it is very cold, it is duller than dull, but it isn’t awful, it isn’t raining. Hang on, Moka Lee is a painter represented by Jason Haam (so their website tells us), who knows what the who where and how is here with which bits are part of Condo and which bits aren’t? 

Moka Lee (b.1996) lives and works in Seoul, South Korea, she is currently studying painting at the Korea National University of Arts, her oil paintings are big, bold, slightly unreal in a very real way, they’re very painterly paintings, very modern paintings, they kind of look almost but not quite like digital prints, it feels like a slightly different language. The subject matter, often derived from social media so we’re told, “declines straightforward interpretation and is filled with innuendos and double entendres”. It feels like some kind social media fuelled post-pop art, the big paintings do feel different, this is what we want from Condo, they feel kind of charged, they feel a little unsettling, full of emotion, something that ‘s there under the surface, they’re a little disturbing, maybe something to do with the scale and the coldness of the white walls they’re hung on here? I like them, I think I do? Yes, I like them, they’re unsettling, I don’t quite know what they’re telling me, what they want to tell me, I know I really need to go back and see them again, they do make me want to know more about the artist and how these big pieces of hers connect to the artist’s own identity, to know more about how she wants to connect. It is good to see a whole body of her work after that intriguing glimpse we were offered at Frieze last year. A rather recommended show. 

There a big gallery room at the back of the Carlos/Ishikawa complex, the big room is in darkness, there’s a massive screen taking up the entire back wall, a rather disjointed film by Sable Elyse Smith is running, there’s blue bean bags scattered all over the rich blue of the carpeted floor, this is the opening day, where is everyone? I’ve got it all to myself, it feels odd, it feels wrong that I should be the only one here. Sable Elyse Smith (b.1986) is “an interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator based in New York. She works in photography, neon, text, appropriated imagery, sculpture, and video installation connecting language, violence and pop culture with autobiographical subject matter” – Scrimmage is the name of the film, it seems to mostly consist of found news broadcast clips, I’m kind of thinking I could be watching this on line, why does it need to take up this space and just run for no one but me? We can all watch films at home, I’d like to be able to watch it again, but of course it can’t be found anywhere on line when it seems kind of obvious that it should be there and wanting to engage. Hang on, let me make a film of the film….

Over in the little stand alone side gallery (that surely has lots more scope for guest artists/curators, heaven forbid, maybe even an artist or two from East London? Nah, that’s not likely to happen, when did you last see an East London artist in an East London gallery show that wasn’t DIY and artist led?). The small Carlos/Ishikawa side space is where the rather friendly Jason Haam Gallery is showing some rather intriguing work by three painters, Jihyoung Han, Jungwook Kim and Mike Lee – by the way, while we’re here, Jason Haam will also present Karma II, featuring “four celebrated Korean artists” that we’re viewing here and in the main Carlos/Isikawa space, Jihyoung Han, Jungwook Kim, Mike Lee, and Moka Lee. Karma II will (also) be on view from January 31st to February 15th, on the ground floor of No. 9 Cork Street, where of course there’s dozen of West End galleries to be found on together on the same street. Back here in a scuzzy potholed yard in East London on a dull dull day the three Korean artists in the side gallery are indeed feeling like artists from another part of the world, which in turn allows me to repeat that this is surely what we want from Condo, artists making marks and presenting pieces that, as brilliantly multi-cultural as London is, don’t feel like they come from here. All three artists here leave me wanting to know more about them and their art… 

And on we go again, back out of that Mile End Road yard, back down to Whitechapel, off to find what might be on offer in terms of Condo at the galleries known as Union Pacific and then Public Gallery, then on beyond those two to Emalin and wherever else we get to before closing time… Hey, this piece is already way too long and you’re probably in need of a break, tune in again later, part two will be along at the moment, we’re only just getting started on Condo here, we’ll be back with more in a five minutes, Part Two to follow… By the end of the long long afternoon we’re going to have been in around twenty galleries… (sw)

More about Condo London 2025 / Previous Condo coverage on these pages

As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing and to run the slide show