Break the Glass at Yorkton Workshops, London E2, April 2025 –  It really needed a quieter second look to make some kind of sense of this exhibition, the opening might, or even the night (can’t waste a good typo), as these opening night things tend to be, was full of distractions, conversations, people in the way of the art and I must confess it was the last show of a dozen or more explored, mostly in the West End and around Cork Street on that busy Thursday evening. The might of it all was lost in the noise and maybe that expectancy of something a touch more than photos of work from two of the three participating artists. Break The Glass is another short sharp show as most artists-led shows are these days what with the lack of decent spaces and the cost of hiring what little there is. I am assuming the artists have hired this space? What little information about the show ahead of time was rather vague, we were asked “what does it mean to lose a person, a home or your sense of self? A three artist exhibition at Hackney’s Yorkton Workshops, Break the Glass, an exhibition that brought together Jemima Burrill, Charles Emerson and the regularly featured art of Julia Maddison 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”.

I guess, based on some of the online imagery offered in advance, it wasn’t beyond reason to maybe expect (or at least anticipate) sculpture, maybe red legs sticking out of something? An installation piece of two perhaps? What we mostly have a walls of photographs, banks of photos of Jemima Burrill’s leg pieces taking most of one gallery room,  a number of photos of Charles Emerson’s work in the other alongside the wall of Julia Maddison pieces. I guess we treat Charles as a photographer, or a dare we say a lens based artist, in that manner of that show at no Parking that time? The sculptures aren’t his, they are rather personal to him, one of his father one of Charles himself if I have it right, the work of celebrated sculptor Kenneth Carter, Charles has tipped food over the sculptures and then photographed them, it is about loss, the sculptures re-animated, the food evocative of times in his life, the sculptures made not long after the loss of Charles Emerson’s mother, the food from his childhood tipped over himself and his father, the Smash potato his serious artist father made for the two of them, a seriously silly piece of work as Charles himself puts it and rather powerful once you take the time to investigate.  

Jemima Burrill’s work is intriguing, didn’t really make much sense of it on the opening night, probably still haven’t made sense of it now? Just random rubbish? Rubbish to me is always potential. Jermima’s set of staged photographs, performances, still life pieces, photographs actually taken by Charles Emerson, are a series called Recovery, a series that might be about a temporary place of reassurance, a place to nestle, a place or places to maybe hide? A place to escape to? A place of freedom for that short moment in time that is now a moment held forever? A sense of belonging even in strange places, the warmth of distress? The comfort of discomfort, the hiding almost in plain sight? A space to implode? A set of discussions?  And over there we have Julia Maddison almost hiding behind her humour and the seriousness of it all, with those pieces that surely have a lot more depth than she’s probably admit to, here’s another #43SecondFilm

It take a second look, it needed the relative piece and quiet after the crowds of the opening night, and as is so often the case now with artist-led shows, it has already happened, opened on a Thursday night, all done and dusted by the end of Saturday afternoon and do any of these shows even happen if no one makes some kind of record of them?  Three interesting artists, a rather intriguing art show and a little more to it all then there first may have seemed on the surface (sw)

Instagram – Julia Maddison / Jemima Burrill / Charles Emerson / Yorkton

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