Writing
Zoo Art Fair / Vyner Street Lates: A Review
The weekend roadtrip to see Ant Macari's installation at Zoo was almost scuppered by problems of traffic. The A1 from Newcastle to Leeds on Friday evening contained so many roadworks—though no trace of workforce or plant—that one would be forgiven for thinking that the government had given the sum of its recession stimulus to the cone industry. But I pushed on, suffering for someone else's art, arriving at the flat of my tree surgeon pal in Marlow-on-Thames late and boggle-eyed. He pours whisky as tall as the trees he likes to cut down and so I was somewhat distracted when introduced to the high street the next morning. I was struck, though, by the unashamed parade of good genes by its inhabitants. At home I feel fairly unobjectionable, on the streets of Marlow I should have been carrying a bell.
The tree surgeon and I car shared into London to avoid colliding with each other on the A40 again, grabbing a mutual friend (a private chef with disposable to blow on art) from Paddington on the way over to Shoreditch. Macari's piece Ruach HaShem (Brain of God) looked as superb as expected: a large aperture in the gallery's booth wall in the shape of the outline of God from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel. Space does not permit a deserving discussion of the work but among many other things it's a whipsmart rebuttal to curators who have him down as the go-to man for street art-influenced drawings-on-walls.
Aside from that Zoo lived up entirely up to expectations: damp building, poor smell and lighting, Laurent Perrier champagne bar, gallerists kneeling on the floor pulling unframed scrawls from the sort of nylon portfolios carried by A-level students. So much for creating the illusion.
We grabbed Macari and headed to Vyner Street, whose galleries were all open for late viewings coinciding with the fair, to give everything the once-over in the hope of free alcohol. Macari had pulled an all-weeker to install his show and wasn't his usual self, so without the usual mutual face-pulling about the work I decided to chiefly review the booze:
Madder 139 Gallery, No.1 Vyner St.
Nessie Stonebridge's paintings could have been quite interesting, had the gallery supplied us any drinks at all to accompany them. However we all agreed that their running out was off-putting, and so left pretty sharpish.
Kate MacGarry Gallery, 7a Vyner St.
I met Dr. Lakra, whose new work was presented here, when we had the misfortune of having to stay in the same damp house in Belfast. The work seemed like a backward step to me (his tattooed film posters from a while back were notable), but then the room was again alcohol-free.
Artists Anonymous, 32A Viner St.
This gallery finally came up with the goods in a highly original way by charging two pounds for big, cold, perfect bottles of Chang beer. Cleverly capitalising on being the first gallery on the street that could actually supply us with some, the charge was paid eagerly, especially as a percentage of the profits appeared to be spent on heating the gallery. Our chef companion was so overjoyed that she almost bought a rather nice drawing / collage by an artist whose name I can't remember. It was half pencil drawing, half tracing paper assembly with a subtle colour wash. Like an old architect's blueprint but with the building represented mid-gas explosion.
Nettie Horn Gallery, 25b Vyner St.
Featured amongst other things was an installation of ten or so sculptures roughly of trees constructed of real bark, real chicken wire and real cable ties. The tree surgeon spotted that one of tree comprised of a different bark, a detail that made me feel smugly satisfied to have brought along a tree surgeon. The beers were warm, but complimentary and served by earnest gallerinas.
Gooden Gallery, 25a Vine St.
I was initially eager to enter this gallery in order to pet a very handsome dog that was being led around the works. But then noticed that it contained a painting in a trapezoidal frame and couldn't bring myself to it.
FRED Gallery, 45 Vyner St.
The beers were very cold, but we had to plunge our hands into deep buckets of iced water to retrieve them, only to find them to be Carling. How can art galleries be at once so expensive and so cheap?