I really don’t know why there’s need on our part to keep on walking the five minute walk over to the no-mans-land of Union Gallery over there in that strange part of East London that isn’t quite Bethnal Green, Shoreditch or Hackney? I do take the walk over there for each and every show at Union and most of the time take the time to document it in some kind of way on these fractured pages when there are a thousand other things I could be doing. You probably don’t care if I do or not, the gallery certainly don’t need us to or indeed care that much if we do or not, I mean, I know why we do it, the walk to the space rather than the writing about it I mean; the pure pleasure to be found in going to an art exhibition, especially an exhibition in a space where the art has rewarded us for doing so quite a few times in the past and Union is one of the more consistently good East London Galleries of recent years, or at least one of the few consistently challenging galleries in terms of the actual art on their actually walls (rather than all the art talk on line that the reality in the gallery never backs up, lot of galleries talking it rather than walking it in this part of town these days). I do question the need on our part to share our thoughts with you though? I do question it more and more, I mean all this art coverage? All these endless thankless hours of it, pages and pages of it, years of it, covering these shows, often the only publication or website that actually bothers, years and years of (mostly East) London art coverage coming at you from our Hackney bunker, why? Why bother?
Must admit to almost missing seeing this show, well if they are going to insist on openings events of Saturday afternoons during the football season and then on keeping rather limited opening hours for the rest of the time, and well, I’ll go next week, too busy painting today, I’ll go tomorrow, okay, there’s time, I’ll go next week and hey, I know, they don’t charge any of us an entry fee, we can’t moan and no this isn’t a moan about opening hours, just that life and art gallery opening hours don’t always line up well and if its and ands were pots and pans and what’s wordsworth? Radical Happiness ran throughout May, if you didn’t see it then you’ve missed it now and you might say there is no point in writing about it now and you are indeed right but I’ll do it anyway, it deserved to be mentioned while it was on, a few words and images deserve to hang around here for as long as we continue to do this Organ thing (hey, we did preview it, we did write about it the week before it opened, we have been supporting London’s art scene for years now)
Radical Happiness then, something to do with the art of joy as an act of resistance. A three artist group show; Billy Crosby, Bunny Hennessey and Isaac Andrews, a show curated by Shane Bradford. “Radical Happiness speculates on how four exemplary artists enact resistance within the framework of painting, harnessing joy as opposition, and conjuring battlements of radical happiness” Four artists? Who was the forth? The curator I guess, curating is an art and Shane Bradford is a working artist as well as a curator, there is an art to getting a hang right, to putting a show together, to insuring the conversations and in this case the joy flows. And it did, the joy I mean, the joy did flow off the walls, not throwaway joy though, this was a serious art show, nothing frivolous, serious art, or should that read as art to be taken seriously, joy is a serious matter after all…
Do you need more here? The joy of what? Paint? Conversation? Of being surrounded, of not asking why? Of hands? Of hedonism? Righteousness? The things flirted with in Billy Crosby paintings? The expression of a Bunny Hennessey canvas and the way you have to let yourself be drawn in to the sensory experience of it all or maybe or the touch of Issac Andrews or the way the three of them hang together, the work selected here really does work. that consideration really did make this a powerful show and yes, we should have gone to it before the last weekend. Hey, I go to and write about far more art shows that most people and nearly always while they are still actually on so that you can maybe react to the coverage should you wish to, should you wish drop everything and rush to the gallery on my say so. This show was a joy, being in the small gallery surrounded by it all was indeed a happy thing, it was almost an act of resistance, for all the crap than comes with art and there business of it and there is such a lot of crap, you can’t ever take away the time spent with a good art exhibition, ust you in a room with some rather good paintings. This was a joyous art show. (sw)
Union Gallery is found at 94 Teesdale Street, Bethnal Green, London, E2 6PU. The gallery is open midday until 6pm, Thursday to Saturday. Radical Happiness has now finished. no doubt the next show will be along in a moment, the shows are pretty constant at Union…
Previously at Union
As always please do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the small slide show….
THE ORGAN 