Art in the Trenches?

By Ma Rainey: triangle player and daydreamer extraordinaire.


The new threads exhibition has gotten off to a roaring start, if the opening night was anything to go by. We had spoken word from Jason Shelley's The Romance; several accomplished performance poets; we had a live Dr. Seuss reading by the Cat in the Hat (my very favourite performance of the night!); and my own contribution blowing bubbles for the children in the audience, who promptly arranged a coup of sorts and took over. There was definitely a very relaxed, welcoming atmosphere at the gallery even as 'hoi polloi' rubbed shoulders with the great and good of the artworld, which promoted some controversial whispers. "I can't believe this is Ladywell," a merry guest or two thought aloud, "this feels like the East End." And in a sense, perhaps even a very large one, they were right.

There are a plethora of art galleries and spaces in East London full of Bright Young Things, with an active and involved audience for the work that they produce. It would be absurd to claim that South-East London is devoid of such talent (artists do not grow only in the concrete jungles of Shoreditch), nor, I feel justified in writing, would anybody stand behind such a claim. But it appears that we are felt to be on the fringes. Migration for those who are serious about being taken seriously is standard practice. The downside, however, to being closer to the bright lights of the big city is often that 'art-makers' become disposable fodder for a great Machine; discovery and success resting more on who you know and the luck of the draw, as opposed to the art piece speaking for itself.

I think it is this point that our guests were intrigued by. Art south of the Thames is as brash and challenging and, well, inspired as anything in the East. It only comes without the ribbons and bows of pretension; the South-East manages to successfully combine style and substance in equal measure, where Shoreditch, Hoxton and other trendy hubs of creative activity often become overly enamoured of the former, to the detriment of the latter. At the threads opening, everyone crowded into the downstairs space to watch, hear and be moved - lions sat down with lambs and shared discourses on postautonomy and the many faces of Vincent van Scoff... TANK Gallery and places like it are the life-blood of underground scenes, offering valuable exposure to artists who can't or won't take their art out of context. Art is an inevitable by-product of living; and those who live hardest feel most.

FROM MUD TO MORTAR

SHERIDAN FLYNN

ADRIAN HAYS

ZIGGY GRUDZINSKAS

ALEX WELENSKY

EXHIBITION: 12^th March- 3^rd April 2010

PRIVATE VIEW: THURSDAY 11.03.2010 6:30-9:00PM

DJ SET BY ADRIAN HAYS 9:00PM

From Mud To Mortar presents four photographers attempting to capture individual viewpoints of the London landscape. From mud in East End canals to vast panoramas of the Thames, each of the artists has a unique perspective of the city they occupy.

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 London posses a dark and abstract quality, contrasting an almost text-book, corporate glossy perfection with an underlying cinematic eeriness.

Alex Welensky's deliciously gritty images are somehow simultaneously very pure and very simple. Focusing on the texture of the landscape around the East End, Welensky's work often concentrates on dirt, rust, mud and decay – metaphors perhaps for the all that clots the dark heart of this great, yet at times loveless city. Composition, colour and attention to detail are key.

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.

Beautifully capturing the wasteland of the 'transitional space' between beginning and end, the fall of industrial London and the rise of the new – there is a nothingness, a lack, in these works which existentially stands forward to be counted, and like Pierre in Sartre's café, is important precisely because of what is not there.

Image: The Layup by Ziggy Grudzinskas