Thing of the Day
FIRST THURSDAY, REDCHURCH STREET IN THE SNOW…
December 3rd 2010
3 opened in London last night, last night being Thursday - a First Thursday...
3 was part of the regular monthly First Thursday set of art events that sees East London galleries joining together to all open new shows on the same night. It really isn’t possible to see everything that’s opening on First Thursday but a walk down to Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London E2 is as good a place as any to start. There were five or six shows opening on the street last Thursday, including the London leg of the “3” show that Pure Evil were putting on, and “Here Today”, a show curated by Tinsel and Twinkle.
The
weather was awful, freezing snow and treacherous ice coating the
pavement,
the Roa rabbit looked really (really) cold up on his (her?) wall - this
is not a night to be out! Surely no one else will be out there on the
streets tonight. We’re driven to go out of some kind of a sense of
support for our fellow painters and art promoters, though I must
confess the warmth of our bunker did seem like a good option. Twinkle
has shown at several of our art shows this year, and anyway, we like
her unique style, really don’t want to miss one of her openings.
So we’re heading for Shoreditch and trying not to fall over, impossible not to pass a gallery or two on the way though and it would be rude not to drop in. There’s some stimulating pieces at theappropriately titled God is in the Details show at Gallery Primo Alonso on Hackney Road. A show in this recently refurbished, rather intimate gallery presented by co-curators Medeia Cohan-Petrolino and Justin Hammond. This group show features 13 artists working in a variety of disciplines, drawn together for their demonstration of dexterity, craftsmanship and a thorough and meticulous approach to his or her practice. Justin Hammond notes that "The idea for this show came about last year when myself and Medeia began to notice a rising trend at shows of artists beginning to swing away from loud, showy or even abstract work and back toward more subtle and precise work with high levels of craftsmanship and intricacy". All in the details indeed.
No
need to worry about the turnout - despite the cold and the treacherous
footing, Redchurch Street is packed, and getting through
the door of the Outside World Gallery to
view the Here Today
show
proves quite a battle. The street is alive with art and people,
spilling out of the galleries, staggering along the ice rink pavement
between each welcoming open door clutching mulled wine and beer. Easy
to lose count of the shows that are on, and every one of them packed
with bodies to a point that, outside of the very big spaces, seeing
the art tonight can be difficult if not almost impossible. Opening
nights are often not the
nights to seriously view art, they’re nights to go out, get a
flavour, fuel your curiosity, work out what you want to come back and
view properly while you do some socialising, some meeting with people,
some networking, some talking to the artists, curators, to other art
jockeys. And it's actually fun - talk to enough people and
you'll
find quite a few have nothing to do with the business or making of art,
who have just come down to enjoy the exhibitions and the atmosphere of
First Thursdays.
“Here Today
is an exhibition curated by Twinkle Troughton and Tinsel
Edwards, featuring the work of 11 contemporary female artists at the
rather intimate Outside World
Gallery on
Redchurch St. Featuring: Kathy
Barber, Wanda Bernardino, ...Sonia Blair, Fran Cowdry, Tinsel Edwards,
Tracey Falcon, Fran Giffard, Chantal Powell, Lakhi Sangha, Corinna
Spencer and Twinkle Troughton. The exhibition title ‘Here Today’ is
taken from one of the pieces in the show, a neon artwork by Kathy
Barber that’s on view and glowing blue out of the gallery window. Here
Today’s artists are taking glimpses, ideas, fantasies and
facts from
history and bringing them into the now. Working with a wide range of
media including painting, sculpture, found objects, drawing and multi
media the artists selected for this show each has a very individual
practice. The main common ground between the works is that of
nostalgia, history and time gone by. Some works are political, some
humorous, some emotive, surreal or aesthetically beautiful yet it is
from a contemporary viewpoint, each artist considers how the past has
informed our present.”
We can’t honestly see much, the
little gallery is packed all night, the opening night preview is packed
from the start of the evening until closing time, it does look rather
good, but it is quite literally a case of fighting your way in. There’s
an intriguing set of pieces and all working rather well together, we’ll
have to make a return visit, from the bits we could see it seems very
worthwhile.
A
few feet down the road we come to the bigger space hosting the 3 event.
3 is running in three locations: 3 in Paris
has already opened at the Lebenson Gallery in the Marais on the 25th of
November and will run until December 31st, 3 in London is in the
Londonewcastle project space at 28 Redchurch Street, E2. It opened on
the 2nd of December and runs until December 31st. 3 in Los
Angeles
will be later in 2011. Pure Evil are handling things in London. The
idea appears simple. Each artist brings
3 pieces for each show. There’s
no curation, there’s no wordy intellectual press release, there’s just
3. The London space is big, lots of opportunity to be expansive and
show this diverse body of contemporary work. And there is some really
high-standard work in here (some of it maybe not quite so exciting,
most of
it is). The giant antlers on the battle ships caught the eye, with a
great accompanying video. Participating artists, from all over
the
globe,
include Andrew Mcattee, Bom-k, Dain, Dan Mabe, Danny Gretsche,
Eine,
Grady, Gordon, Gustavo Ortiz, Isaac Cordal, James Flames, Jeanne
Briand, Lucas Price, Mason Marcobello, Medo, Pure Evil, Rene Almanza,
Roa, Silencio, Wendell Mcshine, Yuval Shaul, Sowat, Rodez, Valerie
Browne, Medo, Jaz Edgar Argaez, Dixon, Danny Gretscher, Edith Kia,
Nicolas Feouillat, Nychos, Sten + Lex, Miss Bugs, Wildcat Will, Daniel
Acosta, Daniel Berman, Uriel Marin, Apex, L’atlas, Ephameron, Patricia
Colli, Gabriel Mbembe, John Uzzell Edwards. There really isn’t anything
uniting the work other than the fact that, on the whole, the work is
all good exciting stimulating contemporary art – various shades of pop
art, street art, video art, situationism, painterly dexterity, punk
rock collage, bronze casts of broken drum sticks, a girl on
rollerskates
with paint and words on her wheels (it didn’t quite work, but she did get quite a
crowd watching on in cheery confusion). 3 is full of all
kinds of
interesting things and keeps us occupied most of the evening.
Suki Chan’s Utopia on
the Horizon show over the road at Tintype is also
worth further investigation. There’s a live musical performance in the
gallery from Mandlebrot, a man attempting to break records
in terms of
the use of multiple effects pedals, his sound and colour compliment
Chan’s
rather beautiful neon and attention-demanding dream-like films. The
impressive, beautifully lit show includes her neon installation Story
of Rice as well as a new photographic work 6805 miles,
her films, her
mixed-media creations are a celebration a subtle light and movement,
her arial view time-lapse of London and hardly moving landscape
compositions hold a small crowd transfixed. It would be very
easy
to just sit in front of her installations for
a few hours…
And that is the beauty of First Thursday, loads to explore, mentally bookmark (while you maybe grab a few beer or two), meet lots of people and work out what you want to go back to explore at a quieter less frantic time.
No First Thursday in January, they’re back on in
February (Feb 3rd?)
First Thursdays - http://www.firstthursdays.co.uk/
Here Today -http://twinkletroughton.blogspot.com
The Outside World Gallery - www.theoutsideworld.co.uk
Primo Alonso Gallery- www.primoalonso.com
Pure Evil Gallery - www.pureevilgallery.arloartists.com
Pure Evil 3 imagery - pureevilgallery.tumblr.com/archive
Tintype Gallery - www.tintypegallery.com
Twinkle Trounghton - www.twinkletroughton.co.uk
SUBEN @ 3 - http://www.subenysuben.com/blog/?p=1108
Suki Chan - www.sukichan.co.uk
More images from 3... 
