Finally managed to get schedules, flesh and time to align with the Bomb Factory opening hours and get to the Factory’s East London space to see Hetty Douglas and Katie Eraser’s Flesh and Time. Seem to be encountering the energy of Hetty Douglas via her paintings quite a lot recently, that’s no bad thing, really needed to catch this one before it ended. “A delicate duo show from Hetty Douglas and Katie Eraser, Flesh and Time takes inspiration from Eileen Myles’ Notebook, 1981, exploring themes of loss, connection, queerness, and pain”. If it is delicate then there’s a strength is their shared delicacy, these pieces feel alive, feel powerful and yes, they do feel strong. This is a beautifully hung exhibition, each piece with time and space to breathe and not impose, to talk to each other without shouting over one another, and while it isn’t immediately obvious which artist has painted which painting (until you clue in to the use of colour and Hetty’s blues that lead you to the other rather obvious clues) these are pieces alive with raw personality…

It feels like a positive experience in here, or maybe experiences, their experiences share with us the viewers, with each other, it feels unfiltered, never contrived or compromised, never watered down or sanitised. A personal process from both artists that somehow feels like it is speaking for more than just the two of them, private paintings yes but not too private as to not want to talk to you, energetic enough to never be perfect, to never want to be perfect, nothing worse than perfection, these are two far from perfect painters. Here comes another #43SecondFilm.

Meanwhile over on the other side of the busy road junction at Emalin‘s, 118½ Shoreditch High Street space there a group show, it is dare I say, a typical Emalin show, Contour Fatigue, a group exhibition featuring Sophia Al-Maria & Lydia Ourahmane, Adriano Costa, Namio Harukawa, Jasper Marsalis, Jonathan Okoronkwo, Margaret Raspé, Michael E. Smith and Alessandra Spranzi, there is a wordy exhibition statement that’s not always through spectacle. We’re told Contour Fatigue brings together nine artists whose work turns toward these sites where containment falters. Through sculpture, installation, painting and video, alongside historic drawings by Japanese fetish artist Namio Harukawa, the exhibition explores how life can exceed the forms devised to hold it. Rather than rupture, we experience oversaturation: a surface too full to reflect, say, or a rhythm too worn to signify. Drift, deformation—where matter slides away from its form and begins to pool elsewhere”. Not sure if we do experience any of that really, there’s something in the sound of the installation upstairs, the room full of chamber pots raises a smile, the broken drum symbols probably say something, not sure if anything devised to hold anything much, the various acts of containment are not really holding me here…

And well, shall we give the recently opened Super Absorbent, a solo show featuring the works of artist, Leigh Clarke at Maximillian Wölfgang Gallery a go while we’re here? Did say I wouldn’t bother again after the failed attempts to see the previous show in the space (a show that they bugged us so much to come and see) and surprise surprise, here I am at a couple of minutes past five, the sign on door says open until 6pm and once again, for the third time this month during their advertised opening times, not a sign of life. The space is a very short walk from Bomb Factory’s Shoreditch space and just around the corner from Emalin so one more chance for Max, shouldn’t have bothered really. Yes I know, running a gallery is tough, yes it can be soul destroying, sitting there for hours waiting for someone to come in, been there, done that, but hey it is part of running gallery, if you say you’re going to be open then damn well be open. Once we can forgive, twice maybe, but three times really is taking the piss, not the artist’s fault of course…  (sw)

The Bomb Factory Shoreditch space is found at 4 Kingsland Road, London E2 8DA. Right over the road junction from Shoreditch Church. The space is open Thurs – Sun, 12-6pm and the current show ends on April 27th 2025.

Emalin‘s 118½ space is at The Clerk House,118½ Shoreditch High Street, London E2, right next door ro Shoreditch Church. Contour Fatigue goes on until May 24th. The space is open Wednesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm or by appointment

Hetty Douglas / Katie Eraser

Hetty Douglas has a solo show opening at Haricot Gallery on the evening of 15th May (6pm until 8pm, all welcome) that then runs from 16th May until 8th June 2025. Haricot is at 2 Blackall Street, Shoreditch, London EC2A 4AD.

Previously – ORGAN THING: and upstairs there’s a couple of rather big, rather ambitious, rather alive, rather exciting Hetty Douglas paintings that really do stand out…

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