Trespass: Paintings by Sabrina Shah on surfaces by Shane Bradford at Union Gallery, East London, Match 2026 – Sometimes it is good to recap, these small galleries that are semi hidden semi secrets down side streets. This one, as we’ve said before on these pages, is somewhere in the hinterlands beyond the Hackney Road on the Bethnal Green side of things here in East London. Heading towards Whitechapel from Hackney is where you find Union, a small white cube in the front room of a terrace house. Do we have hinterlands in that part of East London? We’re surely too far from the river, the canal or anything else? Do like this rather informally formal gallery in these almost secret back streets and we did once again recommend this show earlier this week, one of our five for the week…
The show opened last Saturday afternoon, it carries on next week and then until the start of April – “Trespass is an unusual collaboration between Union curator Shane Bradford and painter Sabrina Shah. The project is intended to test the jurisdiction of creative authorship in a traditional gallery setting. While these works are firmly Shah’s paintings, the fact that they have been painted on top of abandoned former works by Bradford defines the series. Doubts arise. Questions are posed: what does it mean to trespass? Where is the consent?”
– Are questions posed? What we don’t know is how much of what we now see existed before Sabrina Shah and her characters, her playful horses and such, before her marks came along. How much was already there? How much of what we new see was Shane Bradford’s art? I mean, it obviously is Sabrina Shah dominating these canvases and you get the feeling that most of the marks now to be seen are hers but we don’t really properly know. Apparently there is a record before she touch anything but we don’t get to see any of that. Were these piece originally considered finished by Bradford? Were they ever shown? How did he feel about them? Were they made with this is mind or just pieces left unresolved? Maybe they we’re finished peices? I do kind of hope they were considered finished pieces, I do hope they were exhibitited before Sabrina got to them. There might be a clue or two on Shane’s social media feeds?
Of course this is something that has fascinated me for years, painting on marks left by others, the scars if you like, the things in the background, under the surface, the things still there in some cases, it really is what excites me about street art, about build ups of graff, the (accidental) layers, the new over the old, painting on other people’s work. The excitment finding of an old unfinished unwanted discarded canvas in a skip, that and people working (unintentionally) on my work, a tag of mine buried, a leaf lost in the growth. Of course this show and the whole idea of this show is going to engage with me, of course it is. Is what we have here in this more traditional space, as part of a contemporary art exhibition is something, if not a little more planned, something that’s a little more of a formal (accademic) statement. There are lots of positive questions about this show (they are questions I ask about my own work all the time)
I like this, I like these pieces on the gallery wall in here, I like the textures, the layers, the movement, the movement of the paint, the sense of energy, urgency in terms of the actual painting. It feels like Sabrina Shah may have worked and reworked these paintings (indeed that she may do again). And I do like her characters, her animal toys that have almost invaded Shane Bradford’s space, almost overrun it. It isn’t quite playful, it isn’t quite fun but then again it kind of is – her toys, her rainbows, her oven full of what might be party food? Her textures are kind of fun as well, her use of colour, but then again it isn’t ever as throwaway as that, calling these piece fun is not anyway an attempt to reduce their seriousness. These are very serious pieces and serious questions both artists are asking. It is a fun show though, it is a very enjoyable (very serious) art exhibition, I rather like it… (sw)
Union Gallery is found at 94 Teesdale Street, London, E2 6PU. The gallery is open midday until 6pm, Thursday to Saturday. The show now runs from 5th March until 4th April 2026
www.instagram.com/sabrina.a.shah / sabrinashah.com / shanebradfordstudio
Previously
As always please do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the small slide show.
THE ORGAN 