We’re East for Saturday, home ground as it were and surely the best show in the East during the weekend that’s actually officially part of the the much hyped London Gallery Weekend is surely Hetty Douglas and her Miracle State exhibition at the still relatively new East London space that is Haricot Gallery. And there is that show at The Approach that opened a couple of days ago, The Approach is very much East London establishment and we have already covered that rather busy opening of what is a very strong rather recommended Anderson Borba show at The Approach, an exhibition that pretty much started the whole London Gallery Weekend off in this part of the city when it opened back on the Wednesday before hand. We have covered the Approach show already; London Gallery Weekend pt.1 – A rather busy opening of a strong Anderson Borba show at The Approach, off to Kearsey and Gold for the opening of Filippo Antonello’s exhibition Aufheben, that and more at Canalboat Contemporary before we got into the meat of the whole thing with the second, third, fourth and fifth part of the coverage.
And we have been back to that Hetty Douglas show a number of times, it pretty much does come to an end with a final weekend that coincides with this London Gallery Weekend. We covered the show back in May, we’re probably not going to have time to get back ot it for one more look but it probably is one of the highlights of the London Gallery Weekend – More Hetty Douglas paintings, this time back to East London’s Haricot Gallery, her Miracle State and…
Right then, midday on Saturday, the galleries are opening, a vague idea of the route is scribbled in the back of a sketch book and the Hackney Road and Annka Kultys Gallery awaits. I often find myself not particularly liking what I find in the space at the back of that very 80s feeling industrial estate where Annka Kultys Gallery is found, I am always positively challenged though, I am often thrilled. I like this gallery, it has been one of the more rewarding challenging East London galleries for a number of years now and I might not like everything but that isn’t to say the shows are ever bad or boring or safe, I am always challenged, there is always a debate, food for thought, the walk always backs up the talk at Annka Kultys Gallery and this weekend (and until July 19th) there’s a big Louisa Clement installation occupying the main space in the gallery…
A new body of work from an artist, Louisa Clement, that I don’t know, a piece of work that extends over about 115 frames over two walls of the gallery cube, piece of work that does hit you straight away. Each of the frames that make up the piece contains a close-up of the artist’s body, something that you don’t immediately pick up on until suddenly you do. There’s text lasered onto the glass of each of the frames, something about the loss of our true knowledge as algorithms and the generation of information and the manipulation of news and everything becoming more and more blurred by the day or something like that. There are facts, there are fake facts, facts that are somewhere between the two. things that do indeed burn themselves in as they are regenerated again and again as AI gets hold of it all and sends it back at us in not quite the right form and one again I’m asking myself do I need all this to be in a gallery? Can’t I just have this on a screen? On a phone? On YouTube? And once again, we’re in a gallery so we treat it all differently, we stop and look at it, we spend time with it, we don’t just swipe left or right, we respect it (or maybe disrespect it), we give it that full Warholian fifteen minutes even if some of us haven’t joined the text generation and the generation of text along with the other digital possibilities that are supposedly making life easier haven’t arrived here yet. My maps are on pieces of paper, backs of old envelopes, my eye is not on the screen, I prefer to look where I’m going, I am not influenced, these slices of text are somewhat more alien to me than they probably are to some, this is not my language, I’m not quite so sure I think it as important as others, including the artist, might think this show is but then, as it has been pointed out many times, what the hell do I know –
“The text is written between hurt, warning, worry, disappointment and physical reaction. I believe that this loss of knowledge in the body is a central theme of our time and a catastrophe that is only just beginning but threatens our humanity enormously (in addition to the climate and wars and the current world situation), so I consider the work to be quite important in my discourse and also a question of where we are developing as human beings, also away from each other. The importance and urgency of the topic is also clear from the number of framings, I think we are heading towards a problem that unfortunately the majority of people are underestimating, but will soon no longer be reversible, if at all possible now, so we have to speak up now and address this problem”
– and you do see all manipulation and where do you get your news? And the voting patterns and the big holes in the whole and Tik Tok is nothing to do with a robotic dance crew and an electro beat and yes the current situation and reality of Joan Osborne’s plight and the way the Canadians turned on her and the others after all they had seen but couldn’t see, and we’re told that Gilead can refer to several things: a region in ancient Israel, a biopharmaceutical company, or a fictional dystopian nation in The Handmaid’s Tale. The name Gilead originates from the Bible and translates to hill of testimony if AI has it right? And yes but is this what I want on a Saturday lunch time in an East London art gallery however reverential we might feel about an artificially generated church service? Like I said, I always feel challenged in this gallery.
I always leave an Annka Kultys show needing to spend time chewing it over, I never walk out of here thinking well that was quite nice, I never leave here thinking so what, I never feel indifferent about an Annka Kultys show and I’m walking back through that rather tired looking 80s industrial estate car park thinking I need to take a few moments to explore Louisa Clement‘s work a little more, to tune in a little more, maybe leave her a ‘like’ or something as we head up the road a little more, as we head to Soft Opening and what will not be the first gallery floor strewn with balloons or plastic balls or dice before the day ends and I must confess I do often leave Soft Opening thinking so what? There’s some sort of group show at Soft Opening for the London Gallery Weekend and I guess I could go read the gallery statement and find out more but hey, nothing in here is really making me want to and Anti Nowhere League tunes are running around my head and so what, so what, so what? Something Where There Should Be Nothing and a Mark Fisher essay and addressing a felt absence directly and A-hahaha! Yeah! So what! Next…
A look in at IMT Gallery as we head along Cambridge Heath Road towards Herald Street and the group of Three Colt Lane galleries and before that, one final look at Sol Bailey Barker‘s rather impressive Pansentient Arboriculture at Proposition, a gallery that doesn’t appear to be part of the London Gallery Weekend but probably should be, it is a rather impressive show and the Saturday of London Gallery Weekend is the last day to catch it and even if we are trying to see rather a lot today…
It is worth just one more look at a show that did throw up a question or two – Sol Bailey Barker, Pansentient Arboriculture at Proposition Bethnal Green, East London – is he the real deal? How much depth is there to these interpretations of the evolution of sacred objects and lost cultures? And the things going on on the wall outside Proposition is something to be positive about as well as we head along the Cambridge Heath Road to Rose Easton’s well disguised space on the corner of Three Colts Lane, more of that and the Three Colts Lane spaces with Part Seven in a moment or two I imagine…. (sw)
Annka Kultys Gallery is at Unit 9, 472 Hackney Road, London, E2 9EQ. Louisa Clement’s show runs until July 19th 2025. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday, midday until 6pm
Soft Opening is found at 6 Minerva Street, London E2 9EH. The gallery is open Wednesday through to Saturday, midday until 6pm. The current group show, Something Where There Should Be Nothing is on until July 5th..
Previous Annka Kultys coverage
As always. do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show
THE ORGAN 
One response to “ORGAN: London Gallery Weekend Pt.6 – Louisa Clement’s texts at Annka Kultys Gallery and the challenge offered by the East as the (catching up with the) weekend goes on…”
[…] well disguised space on the corner of Three Colts Lane. Now where were we? We left it with Part Six and still catching up with whatever all that London Gallery Weekend stuff was actually about. Was […]