Here we go then, we’re well into Spring now, it has already been a busy art year. On with another Five Art Things thing, on we go and never mind the bliss or the selfies in front of the art or whatever we said last time. Five art things, five more art things happening somewhere around right now (or any moment now). Five art shows to check out in the coming days as we repeat ourselves. We do aim to make this an (almost) weekly round up of recommended art events, five shows, exhibitions or things we rather think might be worth checking out. Mostly London things for that is where we currently operate and explore, and like we said last time, these five recommendations come with no claims that they are “the best five” or the “Top Five”, we’re not one of those annoying art websites that ignore most things whilst claiming to be covering everything and proclaiming this or that to be the “top seven things” or the “best things this weekend”. This Five Things thing is simply a regular list of five or so recommended art things happening now or coming up very soon that we think you might find as interesting as we think we will…
And we should add, that entry to these recommended exhibitions and events, unless otherwise stated, is free…
1: Lee Maelzer, Rats! at Way Out East (University of East London) – On now and until 22nd April 2025 with an opening/talk on Wednesday 2nd April 5pm until 8pm – Lee’s paintings are always worth seeing, “Rats! Lee Maelzer’s 13th solo show features haunting paintings exploring memory, dream states, and forgotten spaces”.
“Lee Maelzer’s thirteenth solo exhibition, Rats!, presents a contemplative journey through memory, loss, and the psychological resonance of abandoned or transitional spaces. Drawing from years of artistic inquiry, the show features a selection of emotionally charged paintings that span various periods of her practice. The title, rather than a casual request, suggests an attempt to return from an altered or fragmented mental state — a re-emergence into consciousness.
Maelzer’s work is marked by recurring motifs: the overlooked, the decaying, and the strangely familiar. Interior scenes, debris-strewn spaces, and ambiguous dreamscapes evoke a world both intimate and desolate. These are places where time folds in on itself, and the viewer becomes a quiet observer of lives once lived. Her paintings are not direct narratives but rather invitations to inhabit the residue of experience — echoing Diane Arbus’s notion of a “spiritual city dump” where forgotten objects and memories continue to exist in scattered form.
Influenced by dreams, personal memory, and literature, Maelzer layers reality with emotional intensity and a sense of the uncanny. Her childhood recollections and imagined scenarios offer insight into the human psyche, filtered through atmospheric light and texture. As Primo Levi described memory as a crushed bucket of overlapping images, Maelzer captures this hazy impermanence on canvas.
Currently a senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University of East London, Maelzer has exhibited extensively across the UK and internationally. Her work is held in several major collections, and she continues to influence a generation of artists through both her practice and teaching”.
Way Out East (University of East London) is found at AVA Building, Docklands campus, London, E16 2RD. The DLR and Cyprus Station is probably your best bet. The space is open Monday through to Saturday, 10am until 4pm.
previously on these pages –
2: Michael Crowther – Bollihope and others – new paintings at Benjamin Rhodes Arts – 3rd April until 23rd May 2025 with an opening on 2nd April, 6pm to 8pm – we did preview this rather fine show after a sneaky look last Saturday when the show was being hung, it really is a joy to see. Here’s part of that preview (read it in full here).
“An exhibition that actually opens this coming Wednesday evening, a sneaky early look gallery alive with small pieces of art, small paintings that are far from small. He was of course noted for his far larger works back there, but these pieces are really only smaller in terms of their actual size, they feel rather large to me.
A painter (and teacher), born in County Durham back in 1946, he was based in Cardiff for a long time, he is now based up in York and this is a collection of his recent work produced in that fine city that we are about to experience here in East London. New paintings. A first solo exhibit from the York studio, sequences of rich oil paintings that are touching on farm living and the north, paintings that are both beguiling and poetic, intriguing, I almost want to say delightful, but that makes them sound twee when really, these rather powerful paintings are about as far away from twee as things could possibly be…”
These paintings on the wall at Benjamin Rhodes Gallery are darkly coloured yet alive with rich colour, with life, they’re small, they’re big, they’re exciting all together in exact lines on the white walls of the small space and once again you really need to go see then, photos do these paintings very little justice. They’re powerful all together in the space, their detail demands you focus, not detail in terms of intricate painting, details in term painting decisions, in terms of marks made, marks placed..
Michael Crowther: Bollihope and Others runs from 3rd April until 23rd May 2025 at Benjamin Rhodes Arts which in turn is found at 62 Old Nichol Street, London E2 7HP. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday Midday until 6pm.
3: Anouska Samms, Leftovers at Greatorex Street – 3rd April until 6th April 2025 with an opening on April 2nd, 6.30pm until 9pm – Now as someone who had been asking questions about the things we discard for sometime now with those #43Leaves pieces, this looks rather interesting – “Leftovers presents a series of new sculptural and textile works that navigate the tension between waste and value, while interrogating the ‘myth’ of home. Made using metal, ceramics, light, silk, leather scraps, human hair and oil pastels, Samms’ pieces – lamps, vessels, tapestries – occupy the space where fine art, craft and design intersect. Layered notions of domesticity underpin the work. The pieces express ideas of hoarding, scarcity and making do, provoking reflections on the fragility of home, as well as how the psyche informs and is informed by domestic space. Leftovers asks: what do we amass around ourselves to make a home feel secure? What do we choose to keep – and what do we discard?”
Greatorex Street is found at 10 Greatorex Street, London, E1 5NF. We’re told the gallery’s opening times are 1pm until 5pm Fridays and Saturdays and 10am until 1pm on Sundays (not sure where that leaves things in terms of a show billed to open on Thursday April 3rd?) “There is a black gate which is open during public facing events. After entering, a driveway follows which opens onto a courtyard. The project space is accessed by walking down the long hallway, all the way until the end. It is wheelchair accessible, and without steps, however there is some unevenness due to cracks and holes in the driveway”.
4: Break The Glass with Jemima Burrill, Charles Emerson and Julia Maddison at Yorkton Workshops – With an opening on Thursday 3rd April, 6-9pm and continuing on 4th and 5th April. Information about this one is rather vague, we’re asked “what does it mean to lose a person, a home or your sense of self? A new exhibition at Hackney’s Yorkton Workshops, Break the Glass, brings together @jemimaburrill, @charlesemerson_ and @juliamaddison to explore themes of displacement, grief and humour through photography, drawing and embroidery. With works that push against the status quo, find catharsis in making, and embrace vulnerability with dark wit, this exhibition offers a deeply personal yet universal reflection on the discomforts of loss and recovery.
Yorkton Workshops is at 1-3 Yorkton Street, Hackney, London E2 8NH. just off the Hackney Road, a donkey’s bray away from Hackney City Farm and the Tennis courts. The space is open 10am until 4pm on 4th and 5th April
5: Homing at Safehouse 1 and 2, Peckham – Melissa Alley, Kate Burnett, Blue Phoenix and Rosey Prince show recent paintings and un-paintings in that always interesting if rather dusty (contact lens unfriendly, it always gets me!) semi derelict house in Peckham. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday 4th, 5th and 6th April with an opening on Thursday 3rd April, 6pm until 9pm
“Four artists come together to explore the idea of ‘Homing’ and its wider context, using the act of painting as a vehicle to ‘roam’ and ‘home’. ‘Homing’, meaning to return to, to belong, to focus attention to and a need for security. We see this idea explored alongside a questioning of domesticity, a sense of yearning, a leveling of sorts and Freud’s ideas on the ‘Unhomely’. The paintings form both a journey and a homecoming, a moving away but also a returning to. The act of painting itself channeling the tension between a desire to settle and a desire to explore, requiring impulse, instinct and intuition. So is the act of ‘Homing’ driving us toward a destination or is it the destination itself?
Kate Burnett – Kate’s paintings explore the unconscious and intangible and are an expression of the instinctual patterns observed in human behaviour and the natural world. Often drawing on imagined landscapes, the paintings explore ideas of environment, impermanence and connectedness
Melissa Alley -After a catastrophic event in 2006, Melissa began automatically painting and drawing as a means of processing her grief. Intrigued by the people and elements that began emerging in her works, she was inspired to join a Medium’s circle where she made drawings that were inner portraits for the guests to the circle, revealing information about their physical, emotional and spiritual lives which Melissa would relay to them in detail. Her skills further developed in her painting, where she often makes pieces by connecting to a person rich in information, through a photograph, a signature or a recording of their voice. For this exibition, she has made a work connecting to two previous occupants of Safehouse, the Fussels via their signatures on the 1891 and 1901 census.
Blue Phoenix – Blue’s practice works with themes of sexual violence, abuse and systemic oppression. Drawing from feminist and queser theory she explores the tensions between collective care, agency, freedom and restraint. Inviting the viewer into a space of dissociation where surface tensions obscure meaning, distort perception and playfully challenge our understanding of material language and knowledge.
Rosey Prince – Rosey’s practice looks at our perceptions of, and interaction with the landscape and how it interacts and reacts to us. The paintings address these ideas depicting edgelands and marginal places often veering into imaginary and fantastical landscapes through an exploration of the painting process itself. The work has been described as a lament for the degradation of the environment and the anxiety this causes interpreted through the mark making and application of paint”.
Peckham Safehouse 1 and 2 are both found at 137 Copeland Road, Peckham, London SE15 3SN. The space is open 11am until 6pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday 4th, 5th and 6th April with an opening on Thursday 3rd April, 6pm until 9pm
And while we’re here, the date for this year’s London Art Car Boot Fair has now been announced at Saturday September 20th. We do believe the fair is twenty-one years old this year (although they don’t seem to be making a big deal of it?). It would be fair to day the fair has lost some of the edge it once had but then you could say that of the entire London Art Scene and it is still a highlight of the London art year and hey… Previous Art Car Boot Fair coverage on these pages
Meanwhile, the leaving of those #43Leaves leaves goes on, this week, Brick Lane, the Isle of Dogs, Greenwich, early this month it was Birmingham, York and… well, 50 of this year’s 365 have now been left. Leaves left left hanging out there on the street for someone to just take should they wish to. Always, painted on found unwanted recycled material picked up off the street. Material picked up, cleaned up, painted on and then left hanging back out there on the street. The recycling is an important part of it. There’s been nearer to three thousand than two thousand now, follow the hashtag – #43Leaves
And the latest on line Mixtape exhibition is now open via the link you jsut passed…
THE ORGAN 