Parker Ito, Happiness is a Butterfly, Full Metal Bunny and Lumps and Bumps at Rose Easton Gallery, Bethnal Green, East London, opening night, 3rd October 2026 – I like that going to different galleries comes with a different set of dynamics each time, I like that no two London art spaces really feel the same, that personality exists in their walls, well at least in the walls of the good ones. I don’t always like the art I find waiting on the walls and floors of Rose Easton’s space, I do always like going there though. I do (mostly) like the way things are done at East London’s Rose Easton Gallery.
It would be incredibly annoying if every gallery did it the way Rose Easton does; I do like all the uniform feature of the graphics, the look, the information offered (although the lack of information or imagery can at times be rather annoying, I guess it is all about the event?) and I love the building itself, that 50s (or is it 60s) feel, the front of it, the clock at the top, the history respected. Opening night or a daytime visit, the shows in the old industrial building turned art space do always feel like properly considered art events. No, I don’t always like the art the Gallery shows, I do always look forward to the next show at Rose Easton though. You might well ask if there is actually need to ‘like’ the art to get something out of it? Most of the time the art shown at Rose Easton challenges ideas, very rarely does a visit feel indifference (and I do find myself feeling so indifferent in so many London art spaces these days, never here though, never here do I feel indifferently bored). And no, this is not us trying to suck up to the gallery, I know well they don’t give a flying flip what we might think, that they don’t care two hoots about what continues to be written on these fractured pages, we’re not part of the art scene’s cool kid media, we never have been (we’ve never wanted to be!) and we don’t write about galleries to please the galleries.
There’s two shows opening tonight, one in each of the two upstairs spaces of Rose Easton gallery and I just happen to have been spending a beautifully rewarding afternoon in Whitechapel which means my walk back to Hackney and the Organ bunker via Bethnal Green ties in perfectly with the opening, except there’s a crowd outside and things are running a little late on the corner of Three Colts Lane and Cambridge Heath Road. We’re left hanging around outside, thankfully we’re in the early Autumn sunshine and they’ve brought some beer down to us while we wait. We’re left to watch life flow by, to check out the marks on the outside of the graff, tag, paste-up and street-art-scared building, to checkout what Skeleton Cardboard might have to say about wanting to make it an e.mail and not a zoom call. There’s a bit of weather-worn Donk up there, and one of those #43Leaves pieces that has been hiding there in plain sight for a couple of weeks now (they usually go in a couple of days but that one is rather camouflaged). We’re left to check out the layers that are starting to build up on the building again after Beatriz Olabarrieta‘s show back in January removed a good few years of it and by the time the door does open there’s quite a crowd built up.
All the waiting and build up of people adds to the sense of it all. And we do need a sense of it all, we do need to feel like these things are something, we need the almost theatre of us all walking up the stairs together, we need the theatre of that “Hell” carpet once we’ve turned the corner and will anyone dare walk on it? In the end the dog breaks the ice. There’s a group show called Lumps and Bumps to the right with the Hell carpet in the middle of it and a Parker Ito exhibition to the left…
Lumps first, the smaller of the two spaces always feels like a good starter; a group show featuring Dogperson39, Sarah Benslimane, Sylvie Fleury, Charlotte Kingsnorth and Caitlin MacQueen apparently. Something to do with exploring “the intersection of fashion, contemporary design, and the human body” so we’re told, a collection of work that “draws inspiration from Rei Kawakubo’s Spring/Summer 1997 Comme des Garçons collection; Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body, which reimagined conventional silhouettes using padded, distorted forms, well something like that anyway. It isn’t immediately obvious who has done what, who’s work is who’s? It doesn’t seem to matter much in London group shows these days, who needs to put a name to a piece of art? Seems the artists are a second to the curation, to the event, to the whole of it.
Seems Charlotte Kingsnorth has created the Marshmallow Bench, a piece that dates from 2026, a rather intriguing piece that’s made from leather, foam and timber and stands on the floor (but not on the carpet). And well, besides that who the hell has created what? Where is the damn information? Actually, I take it back, that bit about liking the look of the graphics and the website, all well and good being slick and flashy and arty and designery but where the hell is the actual information? Of course there were no labels anywhere in the gallery, of course there weren’t! Sure, there’s a wordy 28 page A6 booklet hiding in the corridor, and yes, you bloody well guessed it, an almost afterthought of a damn QR code on the last page of said booklet that requires we get out out phones and scan the damn thing (assuming we all have a damn phone that is and no I don’t want to be looking at my damn phone in the gallery, I want to look at the damn art! Why can’t the information be on the actual gallery wall or at least on the damn website waiting to be explored when you get home afterwards? You know what, fuck it, I liked one or two of the Limps and Bumps pieces, I liked the carpet if indeed that is what it was, I liked that blue lumpy thing (there was a pretty awful painting on the wall, I didn;t like that much). I liked Charlotte Kingsnorth’s Marshmallow Bench, but frankly, after trying to hunt down the info on the damn website of the gallery’s social media afterwards I’m past the point of give two shits about who did what.
Lumps and Bumps was and is a rather good show, there’s lots to be stimulated by, I felt good about most of it, I was looking forward to finding out more once I got home, seems who the artists are isn’t that important. Well worth going and having a look though (and yes I could scan the damn QR code now I’m home but no, I damn well hate it all being about phones and QR codes and electric looms replacing working weavers…), here’s another #43SecondFilm…
Over on the other side, over in the bigger of the two Rose Easton spaces there’s Parker Ito and a colo show called Happiness is a Butterfly, Full Metal Bunny which probably explains all the chat about NFTs outside while we were waiting? Aren’t they a thing of the past already? Now Parker Ito’s show looks and feels immediately exciting, if does feel like that event we want, art as entertainment, like something is happening. Although once you’re past all the low light smoke and mirrors how much is there really here? And what the hell is “Post-internet” besides possibly being a phrase to potentially boil a person’s piss?
The silhouettes of the people looked good, the shapes of things to come in the dark of it all. What is going on in the actual films or projections or lights on walls? Who knows? Standing there for a wile doesn’t reveal that much. Maybe the event really really is the thing? There a couple or more paintings, half-digital half-physical things overworked and worked on again and then lost in the arc and the dark of this opening night. Paintings that are something to do with panting internet codes or footprints and knights and once again really they don’t ignite anything much in me other then their act of playing their bit parts in the whole thing. One more #43SecondFilm
I am tempted to say something like it isn’t you, its me? To blame my lack of emotional availability or lack of readiness by now after an hour or so of being in here or waiting outside. A polite script on my part to avoid a harsh argument maybe? Or just not being that arsed about notions of hyper-contemporary art and post whatever this is? Post-irony, post-rock, post full metal, post-internet, post-postman pat post whatever here is 2026. Not being that arsed about the shape of words or 8-bit chords (we’re not advise to an 8-bit chord or two on our radio show that goes worldwide every week via the very same internet that most of us learnt about Parker on in the first place) or maybe not being that bothered about what the emperor (or whoever it was on that horse) was wearing. I don’t know, I do rather fancy some (of the pilgrim’s) sticky toffee pudding now )or at least a cup of Sticky Toffee Tea (no really, Yorkshire Tea make it). What say we get out of here and go make some custard (I bet they won’t be sharing this one on the internet, post that one, post-wallop, post-sorted, post-black-and-white+cat). See you at the next one.
I do like going to Rose Easton’s corner of the world, I do like the sense of it all, the theatre, the event, the moment, the hour or whatever spent each time, I kind of want more than these two shows though and wasn’t the idea of “post-internet art” something from way back at the start of this century? I hasn’t this all been offered up and thrown over already? I’m off to paint a sticky toffee pudding, to make some custard and check my bruises… (sw)
Rose Easton is at 223 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, London, E2 0EL. The space is open Wednesday until Saturday, midday until 6pm. The two exhibitions, both Parker Ito’s solo show and the Lumps and Bumps group show are on until on until 12th December 2026. The door is usually locked, there is no obvious sign and very little clue that there is an art gallery there, don’t let that put you off though, do ring the bell, they’ll just buzz you in and leave you alone to explore it…
Recently at Rose Easton…
As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show…
