Wasn’t there supposed to be some writing here, something about art? Where’s the art coverage gone? Truth is, for the first time in quite a few years, last weekend I walked past a gallery and didn’t go in (besides the ones I find too annoying to go in to these days that is, there are quite a few of those), I mean, I was on my way to the market for cheap fruit and there it was, I knew it was there and I knew they had a new show on and I did have time and their shows are usually worth a look, I did turn and head towards the door and then just thought to myself, you know what, why bother? Why care? So I didn’t bother and I didn’t really care and instead I went and bought many (many) small oranges for my couple of quid. Do like Whitechapel market and it isn’t that I’m getting bored with visual art and galleries, I’m just finding myself a touch underwhelmed. unsatisfied and now and again a touch annoyed (well more than a touch at times). I’m not really walking out of galleries as often as I was thinking I really need to rush home and write about this (or that I need to rush home to my own paint). Right now the London art scene is both underwhelming and annoying me in so so many ways. Not that the London art scene has ever given two hoots about what we think or write about it on these pages. Do I need to write about any of it any more? Actually the inbox here and the direct messages on social media asking us to come to your openings suggest you do give a flying flip about what might be said around here, not that you’d admit it when we do say something, not that you gallery people ever publicly acknowledge much of the coverage when it does happen on these pages… 

Did go to The Approach again a couple of weeks ago, via the awfully underused Nile End Art Pavilion, or even the Mile End Art Pavilion, an art gallery at the end of the Nile might be a little more exciting right now rather than another walk down the Regent’s Canal from Hackney to a space that rather stupidly you can’t even get into via the canal tow path. More on the Art Pavilion in another piece on another page in a moment (hopefully), there was an artist-led group show called The Way We Art happening in the space. At least he Mile End Art Pavilion was busy unlike the not very engaging establishment space that is the deathly quite Approach Gallery where a group show called Thinking of somewhere else had just opened. First weekend and there’s no one here! Besides the opening nights when the scenesters like to turn up just to stand in the way of the art, or when things like the London Gallery Weekend or that most annoying Condo thing that likes to celebrate itself are happening, there rarely is that many people in this admittedly rather beautiful upstairs art gallery above the pub in East London. THe Approach is a strange place, been going in there for years now and they still never say hello, they still look at me like I might have shit on my shoes, the London Art Scene can feel a touch unfriendly at times…   

“Thinking of somewhere else brings together Milton Avery, Gabriella Boyd, Anna Glantz, Merlin James and Stephen McKenna; five artists from different generations who attempt to translate our sensory experience of the world into painting. Positioned between abstraction and figuration, the works in the show articulate form through fields of colour, spatial relationships and tonal variations. The works are suggestive of architecture or landscape, yet remain undefined and ambiguous. Painting is approached not as a mode of pure representation, but as a means of revealing connections between vision, memory and language….” so the show statement tells us. And yes, there’s are conversations between the pieces and yes there is art that has some gravitas in terms of history, in terms of the talk, Milton Avery in particular was an artist of influence in terms of American modernism but really, am I that excited here? I know I should be being respectful, I should maybe be stroking my chin, I should be reverential, I should, I guess, be feeling rather privileged to see this in the East End of London, thankful even.  I should be pleased to see Gabriella Boyd’s recent dream-like compositions that “blend figuration with abstraction” alongside the work of Milton Avery or Stephen McKenna and his reflecting of the ideas of the 1960s avant-garde that absorbed the legacy of both Surrealism and the influence of European pop culture back there.

So there’s a Stephen McKenna painting from 1966 sharing the room with a couple of very recent Anna Glantz paintings which I guess is a good thing, actually I guess it is a rather brilliant thing, all the look at this and the here and now next to the then of it all but really, I’m in here, just me and these paintings, no distractions, no one in the way and well, I don’t know? The last time I saw an Anna Glantz solo show (three or four years ago in this same gallery) I was rather impressed, rather engaged – Anna Glantz has a new exhibition of paintings at The Approach, East London. Didn’t realise it until the morning after but this just might be one of the finest show of paintings I’ve been to in quite some time… – I don’t know, maybe I just politely leave this group show and I guess this interesting way to place the artists you currently represent as a gallery in some kind of time and place and quietly head down the stairs (via the Lisa Oppenheim exhibition and that rather lurid hybrid photography in the smaller Annexe space at The Approach) and off to the next gallery and the nest page… 

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. The current shows at The Approach both end on 4th April 2026.