On along the canal towpath from that show on the side of the boat at Canalboat Contemporary, on down towards the river and you do get the since that you are heading down to the river when walk along the towpath from Hackney. The Art Pavilion in Mile End Park is a large gallery space, an infuriating space. The building itself is buried in a grass bank and has a glass frontage that overlooks a small lake just off the always canal, a fine building but how frustratingly annoying is it that you can’t get to it from the canal. No one ever walks past the the front of building, there’s hundreds of people walking past on the canal towpath (thousands on a nice day), all that footfall and no chance of any interaction, no access, no open door and that surely is what an art gallery should be about more than anything? That open door, the engagement, that conversation the art needs to have with the passing public. All those people walking past and no way to get to them through the always locked door and the back of the gallery turned in such an unwelcoming manner. What a useless public space (and so damn expensive for us artists to hire the council owned space which is why hardly any of us East London artists ever show in the space, if we can’t engage then really what is the point in going to all that expense?), Today is not the day for raging at the obvious, there’s an art exhibition on, there’s a last minute sign been put up further down the towpath and well, take the detour, walk through the part and around to the front sand the fancy neon sign that no one ever gets to see (it is so bloody obvious that you should be able just walk in as you are enjoying a stroll along the canal).

Alison Chaplin has a rather expansive show in the Art Pavilion at the moment, a retrospective exhibition, A Life In Pictures, a milestone retrospective exhibition celebrating Alison Chaplin’s creative evolution as an artist; “Five decades of imaginative exploration from contemplative reflections of her family, through using the metaphor of natural forms to investigate relationships, to a more expansive portrayal of landscape, especially her local environment of Epping Forest”. 

Now I must confess I know little about Alison Chaplin, as far as I can recall, I haven’t seen her work before, we certainly haven’t covered her work on these long-standing pages (which is a shame). This is a wonderful show. She might not be on the cool cutting edge, the usual London art crowd might not be flocking to this one, but Alison Chaplin’s lifetime of work is full of so painterly much joy and so much more besides. Her landscapes and her light in particular are wonderful, her figurative studies so full of intrigue, and her experimental side (that you want to see more of) powerful. You kind of get the idea she’s been almost secretly doing this for fifty years or more, in a world of her own with her “Five decades of imaginative exploration”. Her large body of evolving work  in this rather big show is alive with treat after visual treat. It might not be the cutting edge or even part of the ongoing debate of what art is, it might not be pushing the boundaries or pushing thought in terms of where we’re collectively at but who really cares about all that? This is a show as valid as anything I’ve seen this year, the fact that this is art that doesn’t seem to care about what the here and now might be or indeed who or what might be the cool thing this week makes it all the stronger.

There’s some beautiful work here, some glorious use of paint, of delicious play with light, play with people, with sight-lines, with line itself. Some of those pieces, these big paintings of parks, are just gorgeous and in amongst the very large body of work, there are several pieces that just stop you in your tracks and demand you pay them just a little more attention, that you just stand there and look for just a little longer, that you let your imagination take you along her paths.  This might not be the coolest show in town this week, it might not be cool to say so with the London art scene being increasingly more and more about nothing but who the latest cool kid is, but it surely is one of the best art shows to go see at the moment. (sw)

Alison Chapin on Instagram

The Art Pavilion is found at Mile End Park, Clinton Road, London, E3 4QY or just along the Regents Canal towpath beyond Victoria Park heading down to the river. The Alison Chaplin exhibition ends on Sunday 9th November

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