Where were we, Hackney? Along the canal bank, heading for the Clerk’s House and the opening night of Kembra Pfahler’s Hungry for Trash. The New York artist’s latest London show was kicking off at the aforementioned House, one of Emalin’s two Shoreditch spaces here in sunny East London. And when the sun is out then the best way to get to Shoreditch from our Hackney bunker is along the canal and then swing down Kingsland Road which is kind of convenient for the first of this year’s shows on the side of that canal boat have just kicked off just by those Hackney Sharks and just beyond Broadway on the way to Haggerston and Kingsland Road. Canalboat Contemporary’s first show of the 2026 season opened on the night before the much anticipated Kembra Pfahler show opened, the boat is perfectly moored for a look on a late afternoon (after the evening before) on the way to Kembra’s opening then…
The boat has heavily documented on these pages over the last couple of years of course, well when Canalboat Contemporary was over here on our side of town that is. As good as most of the small shows in the ex post office notice board on the side of the modest narrow boat have been, the shows probably don’t warrant a trek all the way over to the other side of town when the ever moving gallery is floating over in West London rather than within striking distance of our home turf here in Hackney. Most of the shows we saw last year (and we saw most of them) were well worth checking out, you’ll find most of them covered on these pages (support where due even if that support for things like Canalboat Contemporary do feel a little bit like a one way thing at times).
If Instabloodygram is to believed then the the opening night “Private View” on the tow path looked rather busy, although the Instabloodygram footage was all about the party and the people and very little in terms of the actual art and well let’s go see for ourselves. First day proper of the first show of the year and the boat is deserted. No sign of a sign or indeed a sign of life, just a boat, some art and no hint of humanity, nothing to stop the passing strollers and that noticeboard isn’t really on everyone’s eyeline, the art is down by most people’s knees, it is very easy to just walk past without noticing it. Things are very very quiet on the first day, is it really all just about the opening party and the Instabloodygram posts? Posts that are mostly of your artist mates rather than the art? Is that where we are with most of London’s art now? It really does feel like most of the current crop of artists and curators think it starts and ends with Instabloodygram and the opening night party and surely nearly every time the algorithms don’t let the information you post on instableedingram get to most of us. Who’s art am I looking at this week anyway? Where are the signs? Yes I did have to go look on Instabloodygram!
It would appear we are looking at a Thomas Houlihan show called Not for the First Time. Canalboat Contemporary’s Instabloodygram feed tells us that “Thomas Houlihan is a Glasgow-born artist whose paintings root themselves in observation and memory before sliding sideways into something stranger – scenes which find the absurd and the tender in ordinary life. He studied at DJCAD and the Royal Drawing School, and won the Ian Eadie Prize for Painting. His work is funny and sometimes a little melancholy…” and I couldn’t give a flying fig what art school anyone went to or for that matter what they’re won in terms of prizes. Art isn’t a competition and you don’t really become an artist until you’ve spent a few years out here in the real world rather than enjoying the safety net that is art school. It really is easy being an art student, harder to still be surviving as an artist and to be committed to art half a dozen years later is when it becomes a serious thing, when it becomes a fight. Most people I went to art school with long since gave up. let the art do the talking not the CV, thankfully Thomas Houlihan’s art does do some talking or at least some observing…
Observations are what we have here, Thomas Houlihan’s observations, some of it indeed rooted in the absurd, some of it in the everyday, two things that are probably the same thing, well they are over here in East London these days as I absurdly crouch down to take a look only to be accused by someone on another boat of being up to something criminal. I like these painterly pieces, these signs of life, these marks made, these painterly drawings, these drawingly paintings. There is only a small flavour here, you don’t get many paintings in that notice board on the side of the boat, there is enough to want to see more of Thomas Houlihan intricacies of the everyday, his drawings and paintings, which is pretty much all you want from the mostly week long shows on the side of the boat. The small taste has whet, we look forward to the next show and more from Thomas. And with that, onwards to Shoreditch and some Kembra Pfahler…
More on the Kembra Pfahler show on the next page (on page 4177 of this current version of Organ or maybe the page after that one), right now our minds are still on the canal and the temptation to make a comment about that half sunk canal boat and the so called Hackney Art Week that once again for this second year has proven to be a firmly closed and very unwelcoming unfriendly door in terms of most of Hackney’s long-standing pro-active artists. We’ll resit the temptation to say more about what we thinking about the aloofness of the Hackney Art Week and head back towards Cambridge Heath Road and the canal end of Broadway Market where Hackney’s own Underbelly Gallery has decanted from that garage home under the railway bridge to a (different) canal boat and the tow path for a long weekend. Underbelly is another very DIY artist-led thing (so of course Underbelly has been ignore by the Hackney Art Week organisers as well, the list of Hackney art people ignored or dismissed is a long one as the organisers congratulate themselves from their middle class cash-free wine shop base once again).
I like Richard Amor’s work, I like the way he uses paint, I like the way he slowly builds things and then builds again. I don’t like all of his paintings or some of his subjects, some of them I really don’t like (why is everyone smoking?), I do like more than I don’t though, he has a lot in common with Thomas Houlihan actually, more observations, Richard’s are rawer though, primal, his observations are from Hackney’s pubs, from the people who pass – a touch of Francis Bacon maybe if that isn’t a step too far at this stage, it probably is a step too far for now but hey, Richard Amor is a painter finding himself, discovering himself, working it out, taking risks, A look inside the boat or on the rails or when he’s back at his base, inside his gallery-come-garage that is Underbelly (where he regularly invites his fellow Hackney artists to come join him for his open weekends) will reveal a constantly evolving big body of work.Richard is rather prolific, a walker rather then another talker, a painter, a proper one. I don’t like everything he paints or everything his paintings say but I do like rather a lot of Richard Amor’s paintings, there’s always something new to see, his work is raw right now, he is a potentially exciting painter… (sw)
Instabloodygram –
Richard Amor / Thomas Houlihan / Canalboat Contemporary
Previously on these pages…
As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show
THE ORGAN 