Brutal Lazarides Vinyl Factory Group Show

Lazarides/Vinyl Factory
180 Strand, London
Tuesday 15th to Sunday 27th October 2013

words and photos: NoLionsInEngland


A nailed on dead (literally!) cert highlight for each of the past few years has been the Lazarides’ offsite exhibition expedition which in the past saw the gallery packing their toiletry bags for Bedlam, The Minotour and Hell's Half Acre in the Waterloo tunnels. This year’s jolly is off to an unattractive grey former accountants’ office block at 180 Strand, London which sadly is just so plain and ugly it doesn’t even deserve the inverted poetic description “brutalist”.

This show feels more about how artists have harnessed the gentle light of the space than about responding to Brutal as a theme. Many of the works interact with the very limited light available in ways which throw their influence much wider than the work’s own footprint.

The one I kept going back to on both my visits (so far) is the awesome installation by Know Hope who grabbed the reflective oily pool gimmick before Doug Foster turned up. Know Hopes has always been strong on installations and dioramas but here he kicks things up a huge gear on an abstract emotional level. It’s all about missing parts not missing hearts, rectangular holes allow found views, found light rectangles and chance vistas. It’s about absences and the play of light through those absences played out with a heavy Twin Peaks meets Blair Witch Project atmosphere. Stanley Donwood will be tearing his hair out.










Know Hope


Next highlight is Lucy McLauchlan. Lucy brings a rougher looser feel to this almost immersive experience as slightly heavy and indistinct figures swoop and gyrate through this gymnasium for acrobatic goths. The movements and curves traced by her leaping dancing figures create a dizzying sense of sweaty chaos and the music from the nearby Doug Foster installation suited McLauchlan’s room more than it did Foster’s cinema.




Lucy McLauchlan


Having mentioned Foster a couple of times already it’s best to put that experience out of its misery. The slow churning light is present, the epic growling soundtrack driving the sub woofer through the neighbours’ ceiling has turned up but those infinite reflective surfaces are missing. What is left is a very very widescreen light animation, a bit like watching tv through the gap under the door. The revolving kaleidoscopic imagery seemed at times to suggest long leaved weeds waving under water then sometimes perhaps strange animated seed like structures viewed under a microscope, all pretty abstract but not sure that it achieved anything either itself or within the context of a curated show, two ways in which Foster installations at previous Lazarides shows scored heavily.


Doug Foster


Cleon Peterson had a very strong show at the Greek Street Lazarides early this year and proves at Brutal that this was no flash in the pan. His mural is filled with pain, brutality and a lack of compassion and it presents a particular challenge, to view the figures smoothly across the many surface fractures caused by a staggered series of wall steps, we need to lower our eye level to the same height as the traumatically assaulted victims of this tableau. Peterson is killing us.


Cleon Peterson


I haven’t seen any Brad Downey indoor work since the disappointing 2009 show with Stolen Space but his Tarpaulin Café here really works well as an installation setting for what appear to be photographs of Brad Downey urban interventions and observations involving apertures in those building site net fences which have an image of the façade they are hiding. He has in the past created these holes in the nets himself, that was his art but this time it seems he is finding the holes and highlighting how the holes tear a gash through the idealised vision of the “artists’ impression” that developers deceive us with. The café setting gives an collection of surfaces, textures and light and shadow interplays which have all the ambience of a poolside bar in a war zone, in a good way!




Brad Downey


Moving onto artists I haven’t come across before, the work of Ben Woodeson was multi-layered chin dropping. Plates of glass and light interact to impose themselves on audience and surroundings in ways which could be either lightweight, perhaps the suggestion of a long shadow, or really heavy as in “this could slice through you”. Best get your retaliation in first by simply standing in the way of the strong illumination, this way you change the light and the shadows, imposing yourself on the way which the art work throws itself around the space.


Ben Woodeson


Conor Harrington matches Cleon Peterson blow for blow in responding to the theme brutality, Antony Micallef doesn’ t take us anywhere he hasn’t before with his dark impressionist portraits while Katrin Fridriks brings an abstract beauty to the game.


Conor Harrington



Antony Micallef



Katrin Fridriks


What do you expect attending an exhibition called “Brutal”? Pastoral landscapes and whimsy this is not. For all the fun with light and shadow play, no illumination was spared for the impossibly dark installation notes taped to walls around the place. Although the core theme perhaps is not as strongly defined as in previous outings some of the installations and spaces are stronger, harsher and often far more subtle than the previous experiences. As with all the Lazarides’ previous offsites, repeat visits are called for.


Mark Jenkins (again, for me, it's all about the light and shadows)



Karim Zeriahen



Boogie



Pose



Esteban Oriol



DalEast

Hit Shot Walls - August 2013

All photos HowAboutNo except NoLionsInEngland where stated
Words NoLionsInEngland

August, a hot oppresive city, empty workspaces, charged tense atmosphere and tourists.  Yup, on the whole that pretty much sums up this month's Shoredtich Street Art scene except that wall space was actually pretty very full and in one controversial case, pretty badly buffed!

Above did a cool Pole Dancer which in daytime baffles but at night amazes.  Someone - presumably the building owner immediately took steps to "conserve" the work by covering it in pespex but....hang on mate.... you can't sell it, it requires the shadow of the lamp to make sense so it can't be moved, duh:

ABove Photos (kaboom tishhhh):NoLionsinEngland

Otto Schade did his thing with the nuclear sun background again, lushly blended paint work looks beautiful.  Nice to see how self effacing this one is compared to the Hanbury St one which has a tag and TWO osch weblinks:

Small pieces by Fred le Chevalier were in great abundance this month and looking very sweet too, such as this sprinting bearded lover:

Nylon:

The "hate Eine" still raises eyebrows - it's by Eine himself.

Not painted in August, just the first time this photographer found the doors shut!

Saki executed a trio of nicely sized Geishas on plywood, the first time we have seen action from her on the streets in quite a while, I wonder why that would be?....what?....you think there might be a show coming?

French Artist Tian came through and dropped almost 30 pieces on Shoreditch walls.  He loves his Japanese Shunga style, but they are a bit beyond risque so here are three carefully selected images that ARE fit for showing on a family rated blog!

MadC really laid down a maker in the largest Commissioned mural category, dwarfing the adjacent Reka and blinding many an un-prepared tourist not wearing sunglasses.  Not a single Shoreditch hipster was affected.

Alex Senna passed through on a Brazilian art trade mission of some sort painting many fey little murals in black and white.

Pegasus got a titilating multilayer stencil up in a doorway in plenty of time for the group show at Arch 402

Cenz

Spotted opposite swanky new bars opened under Hoxton overground station, not saying beer and weed is solely a Hoxton thing of course.  Artist unknown (MFI?)

Two long standing murals got taken out too this month along the stretch on Redchurch street, probably only a matter of time before this wall is made pretty once more by the hottest new artist wanting a legal wall sooner or later....until then a nice bit of Chrome will do.

So, the end of summer is upon us, traditionally we expect less activity as the weather cools down....but seasonally adjusted longer hours of darkness can lead to more opportunity for illicit decorative activities. Lets see what September has to offer!

Cranio at Fun Factory, London

Fun Factory
133 - 135 Bethnal Green Road
29 August, 1 night only

all photographs: NoLionsInEngland


Cranio has been busy in London for the past few weeks painting a load of his characters on very visible walls across the metropolis, and a few low key not so legitimate walls but hush hush about that apparently.


Cranio, Brick Lane, Shoreditch


Cranio, Shoreditch, London


If came as a surprise to hear that he had found enough time during his stay here to dive into the studio and create a dozen stunning large images on paper. They are all formed around the same basic image of one figure stage right but are all so dissimilar as to be effectively each an original. The figure is Cranio’s Amazonian Indian who is up to his usual spendthrift tricks having flogged his land rights and cultural identity for a suitcase full of dollars.




Bus Stop


The gimmicky twist with these pictures becomes apparent when the lights go down and the pictures glow. Well, some of them.




"For sale: one size fits all"


This display brought all twelve prints together for one night only before they got packed up and despatched to their new owners. It appeared on the night that a few may still be available. One more thought, looking at the rough hewn finish of Fun Factory’s temporary home cements Fun Factory's niche in London's street art culture, kind of where Pure Evil was a while back. This manifestation of Fun Factory will be missed when it is obliged to pull down the shutters in early September when the building redevelopment starts.