Back to the Canal Boat Contemporary where things are in full Summer sunlit flow right now. Last week that Box on the side of the boat featured the paintings of Lucile Haefflinger, this week we find Lindsay Mapes and her Pick’n Mix installation especially made for the boat. We’ve been regularly covering the exhibitions in the side of the boat this Summer as it moves up and down the Regent’s Canal here in London, we need to catch up with recent events (hey, these are busy times, can have this Organ thing eating all the painting time).  Canal Boat Contemporary has been tied up on the towpath in Haggerston, East London, for the last couple of weeks, before that is was under the trees alongside Victoria Park, you need to follow the Boat’s Instagram feed to see where they are, a new show opens every Wednesday at 6pm. Love the idea of the boat and that big black-framed ex-Post Office glass fronted notice board on side of it which means the exhibitions are permanently open. The show last a week as well as last night’s Lindsay Mapes exhibition opening have both been in bright bright sunshine. It isn’t ideal, that glass front, the reflections the need to squat down to see the art, those damn joggers, the cyclists who think they own the path but then again it is ideal, all those passers by just stopping and from what we have witnessed, being very positive about it all, I love this boat thing.

The standards have been high and and nothing is dropping in terms of those rather intriguing searching paintings of Lucile Haefflinger. Last week’s exhibition was titled On Nothing, apparently Inspired by a passage from Prehistory of the Future by Pierre Gouletquer about archaeological sites dismissed for showing “nothing”. Lucile turns that absence into presence”.  

Lucile Haefflinger writes: “I am scrutinising the back of my hand. There is nothing to see there. Still, I see new information emerging: I see the lines of my grandmother’s hands, I see unsaid crawling feelings.” The surface says nothing. And still, it speaks.  A new name to us, Lucile Haefflinger (b. 1996, Northern France) is a London-based artist working in painting, drawing, weaving, and ceramics. A graduate of Textile & Text from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, and an alumna of the Royal Drawing School, she uses tactile media to “unearth stories” in her surroundings. I like these small paintings, small in actual size, big in other ways, I like these lines, those textures, there surely never is “nothing”? Not if you look, not if you allow yourself to really look and there big painting might be small in size but they do rather invite you look, to explore, to discover, to search those rich earthy lines and textures. Once again an artist showing on the side of the boat that we want to see more of…

Now we do know the bold work of Lindsay Mepes, last encountered as a significant part of that exhibition over in Deptford earlier this year – A Gesture, An Action and a very very (very) rewarding set of contemporary abstract painters and paintings over at APT Gallery, Deptford, South London. Here, for the boat, she’s made some site-specific work that really does feel like a Pick ‘N Mix, you really to want to select a bag of piece and take them to the counter to be weighed. It does feel like one whole brightly coloured thing, the parts of which have mostly been allowed to just fall where they want to within the box, Brightly coloured oven-baked Polymer sculptures, small, not quite miniatures, they almost feel like they might be alive or at least ready to burst into life, they feel like fun here in the early evening Summer Sun, art that makes you smile, sometimes that is no bad thing, sometimes art needs to make us smile, not too often, just now and again. The piece comes with an excellent essay from Compost magazine‘s David Caines that describes the delight of these pieces rather well, apparently these pieces are ‘dabbles’ which kind of hints at something throwaway. These pieces aren’t throwaway, fun maybe, never throwaway. Pop Art? Maybe? Sweet toothed pieces not far from several of those familiar pink Sweet Toof pieces on the East London canal bank and a different side of Lindsay Mapes and always bold work. 

Hey, this Lindsay Mapes show, as seriously good as it is, is fun, this boat is fun, these weekly gatherings on the towpath are fun, see you next week or maybe the week after for more fun in the sun on the canal somewhere in London or maybe beyond? (sw)

The Lindsay Mapes exhibition is on until July 8th on the Kings Cross/Islington side of the bridge on Kingsland Road in Haggerston, East London. A six or so minute walk from Haggerston railway station, or a similar short walk along the canal from Broadway Market and Hackney

Instagram: Canal Boat Contemporary / Lindsay Mapes / Lucile Haefflinger

Taking photos of the boat in the sunshine is almost impossible but hey, I tried (and I might have stolen a couple), do as always, click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show…