Tank, The Ladywell Tavern, 80 Ladywell Rd, SE13 7HS. info@tanklondon.co.uk www.tanklondon.co.uk
His stunning paintings, delicate and obsessively intricate, record the beauty of these forgotten spaces. In contrast, his bold installation works, inspired by the man made interventions that proliferate the roads and border lands, they incorporate the practical and clean aesthetics of the graphic designer. As with the threads of tarmac that cross the nation, where the wild edge of nature meet the garish formality and regulation of modern existence, Chell's works co-exist together in comfortable opposition.
All Edward Chell's creations are rendered with meticulous attention to detail, fine craftsmanship and conceptual vigour.
I am very much looking forward to this show and couldn't think of a better artist to conclude our residence at Tank.
More info on the Tank website.
I had the idea to hang a continuous piece of white fabric throughout Tank to create a sail like installation. This was mostly inspired by sailing with my father when I was thirteen years old. He worked on tall ships for a company called Vision Quest in the US. They took groups of delinquent kids from juvenile hall on wagon trails across the Nevada dessert or sailing two masted schooners around the East coast.
The New Way was not in official service for most of the year we spent living in Pensacola, Florida. I think it was waiting for some kind of repair or service before they could continue questing. In the mean time we got to sail on short charter trips around Pensacola Bay. We then took a trip 200 miles East along the Gulf Coast to to Apalachicola on her sister ship the Bill of Rights. Wow what a trip. Crazy storms! I kept trying to get on deck and help ( I felt totally sick downstairs and loved being on deck) My dad had to lock me down to keep me safe! The following summer we sailed the Bill of Rights all the way around Florida from Pensacola to Georgia with many an adventure along the way.
I loved working on the boat. Climbing out onto t
he rigging and furling the sails while the boat was speeding through the waves. I helped pull up the anchor determined to use every inch of power and gravity to help me pull my lever just as fast as the guy on the opposite one, despite my fairly slight frame. Coz I can do anything just as good as a grown guy..right!? My dad was proud and called me his “little sweat princess” Yeah, thanks dad! Yuck!
The sails are ever changing. Big and billowing, being reigned in, one up one down, furled, unraveled, swinging the boom over, forever permutating to catch the best wind.
When I arrived in the gallery to make Sail, I had an idea about what I wanted but actually it evolved much better than I expected. Taking on the characteristics of real sails while bonding with the building itself in a way I did not expect. I find myself lingering on the top floor of tank longer and longer, soaking in the light and the breeze.
Aliceson Carter's video works form the perfect collaboration. Charing Cross shows a memorizing sky - most of what you can see while at sea. And Rain with flows abstractly on a horizontally like the water alongside a boat.
I feel like tank has set sail with me in it! Humm...where shall I go?
Aoife
PS: I found the Bill of Right and what was the New Way:
http://schoonerwesternunion.blogspot.com/
http://schoonerbillofrights.blogspot.com/
The plan so far is to strip out and bin the crap, rescue some of the tat (I have my eye on a very old and stunningly beautiful type writer) and build some sculpture. I’m getting ahead of myself really. We have our work cut out. Walls need to be scrubbed, floors washed, and partition walls built. This done we hope to have a great space, and here’s the genius twist, that we won’t be turning into actual gallery space.
Wh
at we hope to achieve is a place where people can come to talk, have a latte, bring friends and get really involved in the ethos and philosophy of TANK. We want people to come up with mad ideas and great concepts 
for shows which we can help bring to life.
The new space will become a place where people can come to sell their work, buy the work of our represented artist and become involved in a Patronage scheme which Aoife and I believe will change the way people purchase work and support the artists represented at TANK. We believe that by building a network of artists and collectors we can really make an impact for artists in the South East and hope that you will want to be a part of this process. So, if you fancy lending a hand painting a wall, or even putting one up, get in touch (there might even be a cold beer in it for you).
There will be more information about our expansion on the website soon and we will be looking for illustrators and artists to produce prints for sale in the near future so watch this spot and I’ll keep you up to date.
Hope you’re all well.
George,xx
The night in question was Emma’s closing party. As we made merry amist the billowing smoke and otherworldly-music, sipping on Vodka and Lyche cocktails (easiest thing in the world to make – Glass, Ice, Vodka of choice and Rubicon Lyche juice to taste. Stir, shake, what-evz – Banging!) it occurred to us that we should bring blankets into the grotto and spend the night. More fun that getting the bus home and besides why would you sleep in a bed when you can sleep on a hard wood floor?
I’ll tell you something though – making rubber Catsuits with what I now refer to as “The Lyche-Over” is a savage way to spend a morning after.
Kisses.xx
George
Our new Exhibition has just opened. Rather than being a direct collaboration between our two artists Stephen Lee and Maria Chevska the gallery has become a space where their work is seen in conversation. We held the Private view for the show “Eye of the blackbird” on Thursday 10th February. I was really excited (I love a good private view). I suddenly, however, became filled with fear when Maria asked me to read a poem... You know that dream when you’re stood in front of a group of people reading a poem and it all goes horribly wrong and you run off crying and wake up in a cold sweat? It’s much worse when it’s real. So much worse. First time I read poetry (from memory) I was 10 and I froze half way through “All the World’s a Stage”. You know the one, good old Bill Spears, As You Like It, if my memory serves. Absolute nightmare, shamed myself and everything.
Second time, Sixth Form, I was playing Uncle Ben in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” (So depressing I can’t even tell you). Right before I walked on stage my mate shoved a bottle of Amyl-nitrate (poppers before they were shit) in my face and I just fell on stage, stood up and blanked. We tried to pick it up but one shouldn’t say the F word on stage, should one?
A few glasses of wine on and with the lovely 
Becca reading alternate stanzas of Wallace Stevens poem “Eye of the Blackbird” we were set to go. A crowd had assembled in the upstairs gallery area and we went for it. It is a truly wonderful poem and I think we read it really rather well. Un shamed at last and thinking about running at Monthly Poetry Slam as a result. If any of you are interested in getting involved all you have to do is get in touch!
Kisses.
George xx
So, Reel Film, Tank's first film club kicked of last night with a very special first viewing. We had to draw back elements of the current installation, A Trail of Tales by Emma Winter, like a curtain, to make room for watching the screen. The pictures are very dark but you can get an idea of how cozy it was sitting amongst the art on chairs and on the floor. After settling in with drinks and bowls of chips from the bar, we watched three films by local film makers and artists.
Our current exhibition was featured in Le Cool this week which is great.but it was also probably the most complex, layered, intricate detailed and fully handmade work we have had at Tank! But being the kind of curator who loves the artist to go all out for whatever they dream up I agreed to help her realize her concept.
I was meant to keep focused on loading and unloading but kept getting distracted by cool book covers and interesting subjects.
These are our building blocks, our source...what we do with it remains to be seen....we will work together to construct and deconstruct within the the space, but also the content. What are these books and what do they mean to us? Piles and piles of information, some highly specialised such as engineering study manuals and some just at the dawn of learning with kids counting books.
ZIGGY GRUDZINSKAS
ALEX WELENSKY
EXHIBITION: 12th March
PRIVATE VIEW: THURSDAY 11.03.2010
DJ SET BY
From Mud To Mortar presents four photographers attempting to capture individual viewpoints of the
Taken with a 1950's camera, Ziggy Grudzinskas' stunningly soft and ghostly landscapes are technical experiments, exploring the uses and the place of the more traditional manual camera in the context of modern digital photography. The photographs were created using a multiple exposure technique, as well as being scanned and composed later, which adds a depth and a history of sorts to rival the more 'polished' results gained from current digital techniques.
Adrian Hays' highly manipulated works have an almost CGI quality. These 'video game versions' of
Alex Welensky's deliciously gritty images are somehow simultaneously very pure and very simple. Focusing on the texture of the landscape around the
It is not surprising to find that as a photographer whose practice has its roots in reportage, Sheridan Flynn's photographs are the only ones with human bodies amongst the bricks.
Despite, or maybe because of this, there is a distinct lack of personal engagement in most of the images. No eye contact and often no faces at all. He negotiates these bodies as though they were pieces of street furniture, just more obstacles to walk around, and leaves the questions they silently pose unanswered. At times blending with the architecture, they are subtly lost in the advertising of the shops surrounding them.
What is so arresting about these collections of works is that they are hardly inhabited at all.
SUNDAY 31.01.2010
Sally Kindberg
The Great Exhibition
5th - 28th November 2009
PV 4th November 6:30 - 9:30pm
The Great Exhibition is a title that suggests some overwrought and overarching conceptual theme - perhaps a deconstruction of exhibition strategies or of reflections in the hall of mirrors of commodity fetishism - rendered in the cool tones of that conceptual minimalism that has become the tasteful aesthetic of contemporary art. You might think so but you would be wrong.
Sally Kindberg just doesn't do tasteful minimalism and the title is a red herring. She gave us painterly Y fronts in a gilt frame as her The Masterpiece for the 2008 Jerwood Contemporary Painting Prize, and in the 18 months since then has been producing new paintings that are always cockily fence-sitting between the sublime and the ridiculous.
This exhibition previews a selection of these new works and from the ghoulish bouffant and bow of The Horrible Kid to blanched grin of The Maniac there emerges a fuzzy logic where doubt and uncertainty have upended any rational science of vision. What emerges in its place is a kind of blurred clarity that celebrates the surreal disjunctions of everyday life.
The Great Exhibition also includes a new video work called Mood Swings, the journey which muzaks around with the flickering flame of Luv, and a persistent sculpture called The Thing of which the less said the better.
In a sense the only thing that really links The Great Exhibition to its namesake is that it also came to the
Text by Jeremy James Wood
Chris Getliffe
Early lies
25th June - 18th July 2009
South London based artist Chris Getliffe is most well known for his dark & subversive Illustrations. He adopts a minimalist high impact ‘pop art’ style heavily rooted in urban street art. Getliffe savagely attacks the media portrayal of what it is to be a successful ‘functioning’ human being. He works across multiple mediums with painting, illustration, & comics.
He has painted live on the walls of prestigious London venues such as Cargo & 93 Feet East. His work has been featured by the likes of Time Out, Disorder, Who’s Jack, & Gravity Guide. He has also produced work for Carhartt,We Hart Records, Artful, & Fix amongst many others
You can see his Illustrations & Paintings at www.getliffe.com, & his comic work at www.kitchendistrict.com
Tank Gallery,The Ladywell Tavern, 80 Ladywell Rd, SE13 7HS
Wed-Fri 3pm-7pm, Sat-Sun 1pm-7pm, Free admission
Against The Wall (No. I)
5th June-20th June 2009
Live painting – 5th, 6 & 7th June
Private View Thursday 11th June 6-10pm
Against The Wall is a live painting performance, which will feature regularly in the Tank Gallery programme. Artists will be invited to create work directly onto the walls of the gallery space.
For the first of this series we have invited a local South London graffiti group to transform the gallery during the last weekend of the 'Brockley Max festival.' Feel free to come and watch them in action on the 5th 6th and 7th of June where they will be happy to chat and answer questions.
Tank Gallery, The Ladywell Tavern, 80 Ladywell Rd, SE13 7HS
Wed 5th June -Sun 7th June
12-6pm Free admission
Aoife van Linden Tol
A Stitch In Time
9th-29th May 2009
Tank Gallery presents the solo exhibition A Stitch In Time by South London based artist Aoife van Linden Tol. Working primarily with explosives, Aoife van Linden Tol detonates small bombs to make imprints on paper, wood and metals. This collection of work uses the force and evidence of the explosions to explore perspectives of time.
Live Performance
The One I Love – Friday 29th May 4pm onwards
Please bring a photo of someone you love. Please bring them as early as possible.
Aoife will explode tiny hearts or tiny kisses onto the surface of the photograph.
Tank Gallery, The Ladywell Tavern, 80 Ladywell Rd, SE13 7HS
Wed-Sun 12-6pm Free admission
3rd April- 3rd May 2009
Christine Kriegerowski, Sally Kindberg, Aoife van Linden Tol, Nazneen Ayyub-Wood, Ulrike Mohr, JJ Delvine, Tung Walsh, Sheridan Flynn, Fiona Halpin, Alex Welensky
Tank gallery opened its doors for the first time with a dynamic cross-disciplined group show Think Tank. The exhibition offers an introduction to ten artists, some of which will hold solo shows here in the coming year. Think Tank aims to highlight the width and breath of styles and practices we aim to show at Tank Gallery. Featuring established international artists, recent graduates and previously un-shown artists alongside each other, we have presented an exciting taster of what is to come.
Think Tank will continue until the 3rd of May. We will also be hosting a late night opening on 30th of April featuring a talk by Berlin artist Christine Kriegerowski about Welcome to Wonderland, her projected collection of photographs on show.
Late Night Opening @ Tank
Wed 30th April 2009
6-10pm
7:30pm Talk by Christine Kriegerowski
