07 October 2002

F-EST walking tour round East End's art galleries, 5 October 2002 F-EST "brings increased awareness of the East End's rich cultural life to local people, other Londoners, and visitors to the city. The aims are access, education and interaction with the community at all levels, to be achieved by forging new creative links between arts and local business.". Led by art PhD and RCA Curating MA student, the walk was informative and fun. Much talk of gallery "programmes" from tour leaders and gallery directors alike. The highlights: Victoria Miro: incredible space showing mostly lacklustre Stephen Willats work, though his diagram pieces are interesting. One in the Other: small but professional artist-run space, showing "difficult" work. White Cube: great space with a great show - Gary Hume's recent paintings. Upstairs in the project space (quote of the day from big-haired gallery director: "theorise the space") an interesting basketball piece in US artist David Hammons' Antipodes show. Very proud of their website. The Agency: long-time resident of the East End. The space doesn't quite have the quality of the Cube, but the gallery continues to bring international artists to London. Vilma Gold: Andrew Mania's show at the top of the stairs is intriguing: jigsaws, dotted drawings and mountains. VG earns extra points for its disdainful gallery manager, Cork Street style. Modern Art: Tiny gallery introduces many artists to London. Barry McGee is a US artist by day, and better known as grafitti artist Twist by night - one to watch. Rhodes + Mann: Oliver Herring's show is somewhat ho-hum, but R+M is a top gallery with a great roster (Des Lawrence, Layla Curtis, David Goldbold in particular), and an impressive front man in Fred Mann, who chairs the F-EST programme. Flowers East: incoherent show from the coherent Matthew Flowers in a large new space. Also: Bookart bookshop (apparently also the London home of pataphysics), Artwords bookshop. Victoria Miro, White Cube, Rhodes + Mann and Flowers East are the standout spaces, and Gary Hume, Andrew Mania, and Barry McGee the standout artists. Food for thought. 12:02:02 AM     comments