And on with the never ending exploration of London’s art scene for some reason or other than is become less and less apparent by the day. What is the point in all this? Why bother? There is absolutely no point in going to an opening at The Approach, far better to wait until the morning (or afternoon) after the night before, opening nights are always impossibly busy and well, there is a name or two in the house for the latest show. The Approach is empty early on Saturday afternoon, I’ve got the whole place to myself; “The Approach is pleased to announce Hold Still, a group exhibition with Heidi Bucher, Hana Miletić and Rachel Whiteread“. 

I do like those slippery when wet stairs up to the gallery and the drama hinted at, I do like Rachel Whiteread, I do like walking around a Rachel Whiteread piece of concrete (we’re not that far from her old house, it really should still be there). The rather intriguing show at the Approach stretches over the two rooms that make up the gallery, I do like being in here alone, just the viewer and the art (and the vague sounds of the pub garden and the sunshine downstairs). The relationships here look good, the sight lines I mean, the way it all lines up, looking beyond the surface, the tension of one piece towards another. The giant Hana Miletić piece on the far wall of the main room takes the eye first as you scan the whole body. That piece powerfully dominates with that black and green whatever it is (it doesn’t dominates too much, the balance is right, the hang or the installation), the power of that piece on the wall sets the tone, the whole hand-woven and UV-printed textile black cottolin, black mercerised cotton, black organic wool, black repurposed polyester, black rubberised linen, bright yellow cotton, fluorescent green organic wool, lime green organic cotton, neon green cotton cord, variegated black acrylic, variegated green linen, white cotton, white mercerised cotton, and white peace silk of it all, I love that piece, that piece hanging in a gallery would be more than enough, love isn’t the right word, the piece is powerful, rewarding in the quiet of it all, in there with all those surface most of us probably don’t look at when they’re out there in the wild (although some of us do, some of us get questioned when we’re doing nothing more that walking around a lump of concrete in the the street or touching the paint on a shop shutter). I like this show, I like the dynamic, I like walking around it, I like that the viewer is just left alone to do so, to think, the look for different points of view, I enjoyed doing so far too much to want to write about it… 

Hey look, I’m not going to start dancing around the architecture again, it is about the experience of being there, the questions offered by the pieces just being here together in this space, the mystery offered by that Rachel Whiteread Untitled (Blue) piece from 2022 that looks like it might be made of well I’m not sure what I thought it was now? Certainly not Papier-mâché and the slightly greeny-blue tinge of silver leaf that it actually is behind that glass. No, I’m not going to dance around it all, here’s the press release, there’s some photos and another of those films down there, I really really like spending time with this show…        

“Spanning generations and diverse material approaches, the three artists are brought together through a shared sensitivity to surface, memory and the quiet residues of human presence across both public and private realms. Whether through textile, cast sculpture, or latex skin, each practice engages with acts of recording and translation—gestures that slow time and foreground the intimate traces of human activity that get left behind. Hold Still offers a sustained meditation on the architectures of care, containment and the fragile line between absence and form.

Brussels based Hana Miletić’s practice begins in observation—of everyday urban environments, unnoticed gestures and provisional repairs that form her ongoing series Materials. Translating these informal interventions into meticulously handwoven textiles, Miletić positions weaving as both a material and conceptual act of ‘care and repair’. Each work captures the friction between the personal and the infrastructural, where mending becomes an act of quiet resistance. The largest work in the exhibition from her Materialsseries is a woven composition that takes its form from a boarded up commercial unit situated on the nearby Bethnal Green Road. In the context of Hold Still, her practice draws attention to the unnoticed patterns that structure our environments, transforming them into slow, deliberate records of attention.

British artist Rachel Whiteread has built a sculptural vocabulary grounded in the act of casting absence. By taking impressions of the negative spaces of domestic objects and interiors—such as bookshelves, mattresses, notice boards, and even entire rooms—Whiteread makes voids visible. Her forms hover between the monumental and the spectral, revealing the emotional and spatial memory embedded within architecture. Often rendered in concrete, resin and rubber, her works are both solid and elusive, holding still the fleeting traces of everyday life. More recently Whiteread has begun to work with papier-mâché, as can be seen in the works in Hold Still, which have been produced from a composite of salvaged scrap paper collected from the artist’s home and studio. Turning her attention to this more delicate, ephemeral medium to echo the forms of everyday objects or architectural elements, Whiteread emphasises absence and the traces of human presence through textured, ghostly surfaces. Lingering between the preservation of form and feeling, her works exist at the edge of disappearance.

The late Swiss artist Heidi Bucher’s immersive latex casts, produced during the 1970s and 80s, are acts of reclamation and release. She referred to her process as “skinning”—peeling away walls, floors, and fixtures to create haunting, pliable membranes that retain every architectural imprint. These works serve as both documentation and exorcism, especially in relation to domestic or institutional settings marked by repression or control – proof that even the most rigid structures can be undone. Many of the fragments featured in Hold Still would have originally been part of a larger composition. Included in Hold Still are pieces originating from a wall or floor of the Herrenzimmer[gentleman’s room], Ahnenhaus[ancestral home] and from the Borg[Heidi’s studio at a former butcher shop in Zurich]. These haunting fragments, some of which have been brushed with her iconic mother of pearl pigment, preserve not only the geometric patterns of parquet or tile, but also the imprints of decades of habitation. Through her ritualistic process, Bucher transformed surfaces into vessels imbued with memory and psychic residue. Within Hold Still, her work resonates as a deeply physical response to that which remains.

Throughout Hold Still the works of Miletić, Whiteread and Bucher perform acts of translation via materially rich, often labour-intensive processes. The exhibition becomes a space where the personal and architectural intertwine, inviting the viewer to pause and encounter the forms not as static objects, but as an imprints, echoes or repairs”.

No, I’m not going to dance around it all, if you get a chance go spend some time with it all. (sw) 

Here’s another #43SecondFilm…

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. Hold Still is on now and runs until 4th October 2025. Previous Approach coverage on these pages