To Studio Voltaire!

…over in Wankerville on Saturday lunchtime. I say Wankerville with some underhand genuine affection for the mean streets of Clap’ham and surrounds.

These are the pavements I have pounded for over three decades as I make my way back and forth between Sunny Stockwell and the Common. Once you reach the Common I maintain it’s a magical place.

It’s just that stretch which starts pretty much past Clap’ham North and then over to Clap’ham South, where the Bright Young Things of SW4 like to go about their ME ME ME lifestyle, can be a little testing.

It’s all about me, innit.

Of course I was adding to this hyper gentrification by choosing to spend my leisure time on a Saturday lunchtime at an art gallery, rather than tucking into a sausage bap at one of the few remaining greasy spoons in the area.

Disturb the comfortable. Comfort the disturbed, etc.

And yep, Katherine Hubbard’s Green Room over at Studio Voltaire was indeed a little disturbed.

I’ve not been to the lovely gallery space in over a year. My last visit was roughly twelve months ago, at the exact same time, on a Saturday lunchtime.

The place was buzzing with the Bright Young Things of SW4. Art wasn’t on the agenda, but tucking in the cafe with some croissants and coffee most certainly was part of the Wankerville lifestyle.

Not so today. The gallery was empty. We had the whole space to ourselves.

It seems that the fairly pricey - but certainly not unaffordable - cafe has now become a fine dining restaurant, or perhaps even a venue for private events.

This meant that the space had one table where a group of four were waiting on their fine dining experience.

Nothing to see here.

There was more to see over in the main exhibition space with Katherine Hubbard’s The Green Room.

Woh, where to start with this? The basic idea is a series of black and white photos depicting the relationship between Katherine and her elderly mother. It’s very intimate, sharing some precious times with her Mum.

You’re never entirely sure though as to how much of this is natural time or something of a staged experience for the camera, given that someone had to be there to press the shutter button. I suspect the latter.

The layout within the space was more enjoyable than the photographs themselves. There was plenty of carpentry depicting the structure of a wooden house.

The moodiness of the black and white photos mixed in really well with the light and airy space of Studio Voltaire. It’s a magnificent gallery and one that deserves many more visitors than were present on Saturday lunchtime.

Some of the photos had plenty of female nudity on show. There’s nothing wrong with that - or even male nudity. It seems that each time I visit Studio Voltaire I’m presented with nudity bordering on the pornographic.

I spared my blushes and headed into the smaller and more compact gallery space to see Christine Hazell’s Different Faces.

These are the sketches from an 89 year old artist who takes photos of well known people and celebrities and then provides a portrait.

We’re talking Prince Charles, Kate Middleton, and erm, Mark E. Smith. I’m not sure how he strayed into the conversation.

I need to be polite here. At first I thought it was a piss take. They looked like some of the self portraits I was familiar with whilst working in primary schools. But apparently not.

Art is a serious business even if these sketches are far from deep and meaningful. It was very playful and some of the portraits did raise a smile.

A very strange Saturday lunchtime gallery experience all round.

I’m probably going to get slated for this, strap yourself in: I didn’t think that the Banksy exhibition at The Minories in Colchester was all that. Yes it was good, but it wasn’t outstanding, or even great.

Whatever.

My main point of contention was that somehow a Colchester angle was sledgehammered in. There is no Banksy Colchester connection. Yer man has yet to leave any art around the odd half-town, half-city.

Other street artists were also scattered around the various rooms at The Minories. This meant that you were left looking for the main draw of Banksy, and then skirting around the sides with the other street artists.

Sure the other artists are all worthy in their own right. They would have made for a half decent curation without the Banksy stardust status that is the draw for the exhibition.

You’re left scouring around trying to find the BIG HITTERS that you paid to see amongst other artwork with no breaks in-between.

Oh dear. That’s going to liven the stiffs up.

There is a narrative throughout the exhibition of Colchester peering through and then disappearing once again. It’s an attempt to link Banksy’s broad theme of descent amongst a town that supposedly has the same reputation.

Yeah yeah, I hear about your Siege of Colchester and your poll tax riots, etc., but believe me, this is a very progressive and very Liberal - with a capital L - type of town. Radical and dissenting, it most certainly isn’t.

Maybe I was just a bit pissed off that after flashing my digital ticket at the front desk, I then overheard a staff member on the phone calling around other people and offering them 100% promo discount codes if they were to book. Maybe I got this completely wrong but it didn’t start me off in the best of moods.

Let’s look for some positives. The Minories was buzzing both inside and out. That’s great to see. It’s only the first week of the exhibition but hopefully this enthusiasm can carry forward throughout the run and be something of a boost to the local economy.

The majority of the Banksy artworks on offer come from the private collection of John Brandler. No surprises to find that rats feature heavily.

The wording around the various pieces of art is decent. You’re not given an overload of information and your attention is drawn to the artwork rather than the rambling words of some curator.

It was also a very noisy exhibition, although not by default. The constant soundtrack of the East Hill roadworks, with a pneumatic drill bang, bang, banging away, seemed quite appropriate for the urban messages of Banksy.

Maybe I was approaching the exhibition all wrong, expecting to worship at the altar of Banksy and all that he has to say. I don’t actually agree with all of his messages and a very small amount of his artwork does little for me.

I’ll try and win friends and influence people with a sign off by saying that it is bloody good that an exhibition of such grand ambition has found its way into the weird half-town, half-city. This is the first big hitter Sunny Colchester has had for years.

It makes a change from some of the usual hit and miss stuff that you find at the Minories but then that is the appeal of the rather wonky gallery space. I can’t but help think that a dedicated Banksy exhibition over the road at Firstsite might have made a little more sense.

The medium is often the message, etc.

To Firstsite! …on Wednesday afternoon to have something of a shifty at a couple of new exhibitions that have recently opened.

First off we have Polly Braden and Against the Tide.

This is a small but very compact photographic exhibition, along with some multimedia, which explores themes of what does it mean to grow up by the seaside?

Polly’s background is in Jaywick. She describes having a love hate relationship with the local area. If you watched nothing but those crappy Channel 5 docs about Jaywick, then one half of this equation might push through stronger.

But wait! What’s this?

Those shitty programmes never really get behind what’s really happening in coastal towns. They’re just chasing the next Daily Mail headline.

The exhibition shares the stories of young people living in coastal towns across England. The photography borrows a lot from Martin Parr, but it’s never intrusive or even taking the piss.

We spent most of the time watching a really informative film, which put together a short story from the House of Wingz dance studio in Blackpool. This was all about young kids in the area learning street dance and seeing where it can take them.

There were some pretty powerful social messages as well. Many of those speaking in front of the camera focused heavily on housing. The connection was made between poor housing and the lack of life opportunities, especially in coastal areas.

The adjacent gallery space at Firstsite was handed over to Simon Carter and his exhibition From the Landscape. The blurb explains how Simon has walked and sketched out the North Essex landscape around his home near Frinton for over forty years.

What’s on show here at Firstsite is a physical landscape being created within a sterile art environment. You need to really walk around and experience it to get the full effect.

I would hesitate to call it immersive, but you do feel that you’re actually walking around a location, rather, within a gallery.

Each gallery space changes colours to reflect the changing light. A nice touch was a soundscape of coastal sounds, such as birds.

The space within Firstsite is used superbly. There are a few false walls in there, giving the effect that you are exploring a kid’s den.

It was also great to see a half decent use of the infamous Firstsite sloping wall. There was a large landscape minimalist painting stretching all the way around the gallery, showing a coastal scene.

The dead swan buried in the floor at Firstsite was a bit of a downer.

A decent afternoon at Firstsite. It’ll be interesting to see how the gallery benefits with the more rock ‘n’ roll Banksy exhibition next door at The Minories. I suspect they’ll both supplement each other and go hand in hand.

To Tate Modern!

I had half an hour or so to kill on Wednesday afternoon. I was in search of Mr. Rothko. I found Mr. Rothko.

The Seagram Murals are of an immense scale. There’s a very dark mood to them compared to the lighter touches in his other work. I found it all rather calming, such was the vastness of the art in front of me.

Mr. Rothko has been known to make grown men cry. Yep.

To Four Corners Gallery!

Yoanna Walden was exhibiting in something of a miniature show with a very loose theme of containment and mental health. Cheer up, luv.

I do love these outpost galleries on the eastern edge of the city. It was a right bloody pain in the arse to get to, but just about worth it.

We walked straight into some big pow wow with three curators discussing an opening elsewhere with some grade A artists. They tried not to sniffle at us as we wandered in for a quick shifty.

I’m not quite sure what the point of the exhibition was, but it was visually stimulating all the same. I quite like the way the photographs were framed. I suspect this was part of the overall artistic vision. The medium is the message, etc.

To Newport Street Gallery! …in between dodging rain showers whilst trying to watch a cricket match in early September. GAWD bless Newport Street Gallery. It serves as something of a more than half-decent outpost whenever it’s pissing it down at The Oval.

Exhibiting right now is These Thoughts May Disappear by Jack White. Yep, THAT Jack White. You almost felt as though you should be wearing red and black to enter the gallery space.

We would have stood out if we were. NPS was absolutely empty on Wednesday lunchtime. We pretty much had a private viewing to ourselves.

It’s always a pleasure visiting Newport Street. I still find it pretty amazing that such a contemporary and free space has opened up around the back of Lambeth Walk.

We’ve made our way into the first gallery. Fans of Ukulele Joe won’t be disappointed.

Jack White has used some fancy 3D printing to create exact replicas of a charity shop Ukulele Joe he picked up. Each one has been decorated in a different style.

It’s easy to criticise the idea of a rich rock star turning to art, having the financial security to back them up, But given the chance you would, right?

We kept on wandering. A load of old garden pallets had then been tarted up in a second gallery space. Black and red feature heavily. I’m not sure what paint material was used but they were pleasingly shiny and fresh.

A theme then began to develop of old junk being upholstered. Jack White then tells the story through the exhibition guide of how, before he became a rich rock star, he worked as an upholster.

The legend goes that he was just more than a stitch-up and makeup type of fella. He dropped in secret messages within the inner workings of the furniture he was restoring. There were strong KLF vibes taking place here. I had the urge to sit down on some of the furniture.

You know you’re in a fancy art gallery when all the artwork is available to purchase, but the disclaimer is you have to fill in an application form. I don’t think Jack White wants to sell to any old amateur collector.

The highlight for me was the collection of old White Stripe amps that had been customised by some guest artists. No surprise to see Shepard Fairey and Damien Hirst adding their trademark licks to the amps.

This was also quite an interactive gallery space. You got to play various keyboards and even a theremin that came through the amps. This was tremendous fun.

I absolutely bloody love NPS. It’s a perfect gallery space to exhibit for one artist. You can spend quite easily half an hour in there taking in what is on show. You never feel overwhelmed and you never feel that you have been under-changed even though it’s free, natch.

I wasn’t expecting a big security guard geezer and a bag check ahead of entering the Duncan Grant exhibition at Firstsite. Sadly some of the right-wing nut jobs have taken offence to the idea of homosexuality being celebrated in art form, dickheads. The broad theme for the exhibition is the changing ways some LGBTQ+ people find one another online and offline. Truth be told it’s pretty average art.

There was some X-rated action behind closed doors where you were given plenty of warning about what you might see. The artwork itself was hardly shocking. If anyone is going to take offence then it might be from the potty-mouth profanity coming out of a PA system. I couldn’t see what all the fuss is about to be honest.

What We Did During the Plague at the Minories in Sunny Colch was half decent. It’s a retrospective exhibition of the work produced by Phil Jupitus during those weird lockdown days. It shows his unique approach to collages using Polaroids and creating custom postcards for his pals. There’s a lot to take in with over 100 pieces of work. The detail changes within each postcard but the format and formula remain the same. I just about got all the cultural reference points.

To Firstsite!… on Saturday morning. I had a little spare time to kill whilst in sunny Colch. Window shopping is not for me. Ponsing around in an empty art gallery is where all the real action is.

There was a time when I was completely across the Firstsite schedule and agenda. Not one single exhibition was missed. I felt like something of a Firstsite completist.

Not so these days. I find myself less frequently in the strange hybrid town/city. I pop into Firstsite whenever I can, but I confess to not having a clue as to what is currently being exhibited.

That’s sometimes the best approach when it comes to art. Just go for a quick shifty with low expectations.

The low expectations approach worked rather well on Saturday. I wasn’t blown away; the art or arse game tended to move along the sliding scale a little more towards the latter.

Three exhibitions are currently showing. The first is the University Centre Colchester UCC Degrees show, To Be Continued. This hints very strongly at what is to come with some emerging local artists.

Most of the work in the Berryfield space was physical rather than artwork. There was an awful lot of fine detail on show. My only thought was that it must have taken a long while to produce all of this - which I guess is the whole point of a three-year art degree.

I haven’t got a clue what it’s all about but I don’t think that’s really the point.

The major exhibition, a little further down the bonkers banana-shaped art gallery is from an artist called Nalini. This is a photographic series that explores the history of her mother, her grandmother, and herself.

It’s very thoughtful in documenting how the three generations are interconnected using art as the building block. It was also a very personal exhibition. It felt more like flicking through a giant family scrapbook.

There were some fantastic photos on show, showing great depth and capturing inner city scenes.

At the other end of the scale there was also some macro photography, which was particularly impressive. The subject matter was very much less is more, focusing on the small and finer details of your life to tell a larger narrative.

By now I was on a mission; my mission was to tick off all three current Firstsite exhibitions. I made my way down towards the far end of the gallery for a major exhibition by the artist Godfried Donker.

The exhibition is called It’s a Numbers Game. It’s quite a mishmash of history, memory, sport, music, migration, trade, and popular culture. The blurb says it uses these themes to explore how people are connected across time.

A large part of the exhibition references the slave trade. It can be uncomfortable viewing at times.

I confess to rather enjoying the contrasting background colour schemes painted on the walls to hang the artwork, rather than the artwork itself. There’s a time and place for the bland white gallery spaces of London. Thankfully Firstsite has taken a more radical approach to offer something a bit different here.

Collage features heavily in the work. Some interesting ideas included extensive use of stocks and shares listings from the old Financial Times dating back to the early 2000s. Black imagery showing exploitation is placed over this. The message of finance and covert racism is staring you right in the face.

So that was Firstsite ticked off for another season. It’s always an interesting place to wander in and have a shifty as to what’s going off. Some of the main structural artwork at the front of house is in need of a refresh and update, mind.

A little random quayside wandering, and we stumbled upon the opening of the summer season down at The Notage. There is a three-week run with the local artist Ernest Turner. It’s a name I’m familiar with, if not the artwork itself.

As ever with The Notage, the exhibition is very quirky, with random display boards laid out on the top floor. If you’re looking for a Newport Street Gallery minimalist experience, then probably turn away now.

We didn’t turn away though. The artwork and the random nature of the exhibits was rather appealing. Plus there wasn’t too much detail about Ernest, something which is always a bonus for me in these exhibitions. I want to look at the art, and not read an essay.

The brief bio details that were available explained how Ernest Turner was born in Wivenhoe in 1899. He came from a well-established Wivenhoe family. His father was a shipwright and his uncle was Captain Albert Turner, a professional yacht captain.

The term used in the exhibition to describe his style was naive. I’m not sure if this is a piss take or not. There was definitely an element of not really wanting to be an artist and creating his work as something of a hobby.

This gives a great injustice to the quality and playfulness of the work on show.

The story continued explaining how once Ernest had retired from working in the shipping industry himself, he took up the paintbrush. Initially he wanted to paint for money. Soon he became rather decent and managed to sell all over Europe.

This coincided with the town itself undergoing a major shift from the industrial to the more arty and academic. The small paintings created by Ernest capture a certain playfulness as you see this transition taking place in front of you.

Sculptures are also included. It was pleasing to see some ships in bottles forming part of the exhibition.

His body of work is a great snapshot of local history. It documents the boats of Wivenhoe and elsewhere along the estuary. It’s also some of the rarer moments where you can see the old Crab and Winkle line being captured as it shuttles along from Wivenhoe to Brightlingsea. That Dr Beeching was an absolute bastard.

Ernest died in 1977. The paintings on show at the Nottage are a wonderful memory of a town that has long since changed.