London Gallery Weekend is upon us again and I guess with Thursday being the new Friday we’ll start on Wednesday evening and the rather busy opening of the Anderson Borba show at The Approach here in East London, a new show opening coincide with the Weekend. Actually the weekend starts with the now regular Wednesday evening opening at Canal Boat Contemporary who are for one more week still to be found in the same place as they were last week by Victoria Park on the borders of Hackney and the Regent’s Canal.

If you don’t know about the boat then may I invite you to explore the coverage of the two previous rather fine rather painterly shows from Scott McCracken and Tony Rainbird, the Organ pieces on those two shows (that you get to via the links that are the names of the two painters) will tell you more about the who where and why of it all. This week the boat features a group show and a fundraising benefit focused on the plight of the innocent people caught up in the utter mess of Gaza, you’ve got gawd knows how many artists featured both in the box on the side of the boat and hanging on the rails between the park and the canal toepath, I assume the work on the rails was just for the evening and that the work actually on the boat will be there for the weekend before it all moves to a different spot near Broadway Market for what is laughingly being called Hackney Art Week; a rather unengaging rather aloof looking event revolving around a few now very middle class gentrified streets/shops over by London Fields where you find an upmarket wine shop an even more upmarket we-don’t-take-cash cafe and a couple vintage spaces – a self-congratulating event that appears to have made no attempt whatsoever to engage with any of Hackney’s real pro-active working artists, curators or indeed the spaces that exist in the real Hackney beyond their rather nice comfortable little one street bubble. There’s one or two, well more than one or two long-standing Hackney based artists who are not that impressed with the so called Hackney Art Week – enough of that, that’s next week, I doubt we’ll bother covering much of it. This week is London Gallery Weekend and well not sure, as utterly worthy (and maybe a touch frustratingly futile) as it all is, not sure if the group show on the boat and the work hanging on the rails as a benefit fundraiser for the people of Gaza really worked in the way the solo shows at Canal Boat Contemporary really really have and anyway it was rather impossible to put a name to any of the pieces so we’ll polity carry on along the toe path past a #43Leaves piece left a few days back and still waiting to be taken, we’ll head over the bridge and past the evolving graff on the builders boards of Approach Road to The Approach itself. 

We’ve written dozens (and dozens) of positive pieces about the art and the many fine exhibitions that have happened at The Approach over the years, it is one of my favourite places to quietly enjoy art here in East London, I do tend to avoid the openings at that upstairs space that typically tend to involve lots of annoying people, mostly art-student types, standing in the way of the art, mostly ignoring the art and talking to each other and they’re being particularly annoying tonight until you clue in to the idea that Anderson Borba‘s floor based sculpture pieces are kind of standing there as part of the crowd, that they are part of the various conversations rather apart from them. Really do need to get back on a quiet Thursday afternoon when I can have the space to myself, there’s some gorgeous pieces on the wall that really do need to be enjoyed properly. Those pieces standing on the crowded floor tonight really do look like they’re part of some ceremony, this is a rather fine show…. 

“The Approach is pleased to present Anderson Borba Secret Ceremony, the Brazilian artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Borba lives and works in both London and São Paulo. Through his practice he seeks textural ambiguity, twisting and expanding the material and conceptual possibilities of wood, creating autonomous totems or hanging wall reliefs”.

And they are beautiful pieces, and yes, textural ambiguity, twisting and expanding, quietly standing there, it is a mix, a fusion if you like, of traditional techniques and contemporary modes of expression, I like the though of the pieces being the result of a negotiation between the material and the artist and some of those wall pieces are just gorgeous; “The artist carves, burns, paints, presses, and manipulates these elements in a process-driven construction, resulting in rough, cracked, yet seductive body shapes”.

I love this Anderson Borba exhibition, I love the “displacing and unfolding the physical body into an anthropomorphic abstraction” and yes it is lazy of me to just to throw that quote there but I really do need to come back and see all this properly without the crowd and the background noise. These are strong pieces of sculpture, they do assume near-human form, very humanm form, they are gazing back at us, there is almost a secret ceremony, excellent show and a rather decent start to this London Gallery Weekend thing, here’s another #43SecondFilm…

Another quick looks at those rather delicious Mary Ramsden paintings that were enjoyed a couple of weeks ago before we leave, they are still to be found in the Annexe Space at the Approach during thing Gallery Weekend – Jai Chuhan at East London’s The Approach, vivid paintings so vitally alive and then in the Annexe new works by Peter Davies and Mary Ramsden and we’re off and ready for Thursday and more of the build up to the weekend…

Now Thursday evening offered a number of openings ahead of London Gallery Weekend, truth of the mater is it looked pretty much like any given Thursday with evening openings dotted around here and there, that’s the thing about this weekend, it really isn’t that out of the ordinary. Cork Street is the chosen destination for Thursday evening, straight to the heart of the affair, we’re particularly keep to catch the latest show at Kearsey and Gold for the opening of Filippo Antonello’s exhibition Aufheben. So far the exhibitions at the still relatively young gallery at the Royal Academy end of the West End art street have been rather rewarding and time is running against us tonight, our own art commitments means there isn’t too much time to catch anything else (they do close early even when they have evening openings in the West End).   

“Filippo Antonello (b. 2002, Lugano, Switzerland) is a multidisciplinary artist based in London. Of Peruvian and Italian heritage, his approach to image-making is a bit of a contradiction, it is subtle, engaging (his pieces are kind of reminding me of some of textile student work in my early 20s), that use of bleach and ink on unconventional textiles such as velvet, denim, and corduroy, that altering of the surface until something new, and often unexpected, emerges. I wonder if he’s discovered the delights of resist dying? “For Antonello, destruction is not an end, but a beginning. In his experimentation with photography, he began to seek light not as a thing to be applied, but as something waiting to be uncovered. Rather than painting from white to dark, he starts with a surface already saturated – with layered colours, with palpable material texture. His canvas is dyed with presence, then slowly stripped back, unveiling that very light that was hiding underneath”.

“Bleach is his tool. Not used for its purity, but for its violence”; the finished pieces don’t feel violent though, the process might be ‘destructive’, it doesn;t feel as if it has been particualrly violent, if anything the stripping back feels tender. “The volatile agent becomes his brush – eating through the material, demanding surrender and yet resisting destruction. It makes him cautious whereas other media would let him roam”. Each mark does indeed carry a risk risk, it also carries reward thought, the process is exciting and the results here are strong, his gestures, the control he allows the material to take is a fine balance. These are pieces that aren’t immediately obvious, and I’m talking about the big pieces in the show, I haven’t really taken in his small collage pieces in frames that are part of the show, they’re really not registering next to the large works (need to go back to this one as well). The big pieces are exciting, they’re alive with the possibilities of where it might now, they are, to take it back to basics, just a pleasure to look at. I just really like what Filippo Antonello is doing here, sometimes viewing art really is that simple…

There’s no time to catch anything else, 8pm and Cork Street is already off to bed. The new show at Flowers looks promising as does the view through Stephen Freedman’s big windows. London Gallery Weekend officially starts tomorrow, Friday, we’ll pick up it in Cork Street again tomorrow…. (sw) 

Kearsey & Gold is at 19 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LP. The Filippo Antonello exhibition is on until 5th July 2025. The gallery is open Tuesday through to Saturday,11am until 6pm (5pm on Saturdays). it is open this Sunday June 8th for London Gallery Weekend. Previous Organ coverage of things at Kearsey & Gold   

The Approach is found on the first floor above the pub, 47 Approach Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 9LY, Access to the gallery via The Approach Tavern pub, there’s a brown door at the end of the left side of the bar that the staff may or may not feel like pointing out to you. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday,12–6pm or by appointment. Anderson Borba’s Secret Ceremony is on until 26th July 2025. Previous Approach coverage on these pages

London Gallery Weekend is on from Friday 6th June until Sunday 8th June

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