Visionaries at Wallspace Gallery

I just caught the last day of the exhibition, Visionaries at the Wallspace Gallery near Liverpool Street Station, which was great because it was a really good exhibition. I am always looking for artists who work with spiritual themes, and here was a real collection of different work.
Three artists that I really like, sadly dead now, Albert Herbert and Norman Adams and Cecil Collins but lovely to see pieces of their work here. Norman Adams had his Dark Madonna, a large watercolour, more sombre than a lot of his work. Brian Whelan had a lovely little picture too.

Peter Howson had an amazingly emotionally powerful work of the crucifixtion. It was really good to have such a selection of work that spoke to the soul, and as an added bonus there was a book of some of Norman Adams work something I'd been searching for for years.

Artists Car Boot Fair.

It was the 5th Artists car boot fair recently in part of the Truman Brewery site down Brick Lane.

I hadn't been for a couple of years and there were probably even more artists and people visiting this year. It was a really hot day which meant even covered in sun tan cream I couldn't stay to long, unfortunately.

Richard Clegg had some amazing cacti sculptures in car parts, I really liked the idea, but didn't have anywhere to put them. Bob and Roberta Smith had some of his concrete pieces, like "Art is my airplane"and "Up is the new down" that you could take rubbings from at £10 they were a bargain. Gavin Turk however had works, paper covered with boot prints, which were quite striking but at £200 each were not really car boot fair prices. David Harrison and Liz David had mini skeletal animal sculptures and tree forms which were delicate and intriguing.

There was a good range of cars on show, one was a piece called doubts were visitors could write about their doubts on the car, another had a scaletricx track around it where you could race the little toy cars.

I enjoyed my walk round taking photos as I went, walking along Brick Lane was difficult with the sheer crush of people, it is so busy on a Sunday now.

Waltham Forest Summer exhibition. and May Day.

The Arts Club Summer Exhibition went well. There was a good selection of work exhibited, including sculpture, prints, photographs and paintings. Katja Rosenberg always has some great participatory art work, this year it was on the theme of heros. It was good to invigilate on a couple of days and interact with the visitors.
Being in the park means that if the weather is bad, few people come along, but if it's nice and sunny of course the park fills up and there are a lot more visitors.

The gallery is due to be closed and knocked down early next year, a new building is planned but won't be open for probably 2 years. The whole park is having a revamp, I can't help but be

worried especially by the number of trees that will be cut down.

Last month I was in the park for the May Day celebrations, the Maypole dancers and Morris dancers were there braving the rather cold and windy weather.

Waltham Forest Summer exhibition.

I took my pieces of work down to the Changing Room Gallery for the Waltham Forest Arts group Summer Exhibition. As usual my work is very different from last years. I have been working on some 'wanted' posters, using examples of behaviour that goes against the law in some way, but using birds instead of humans.

This is what I wrote about the work for the exhibition.
In this piece I have explored environmental concerns and social controls through subverting the symbolic "wanted" poster. Though humorous in intent, the work is also a comment on the nature of growing bureaucracy, the freedom of the birds is contrasted with the growing loss of freedom in our own lives. It is also a comment on the human demands for growth and profit that has lead to a decline in some of our most loved birds including the sparrow. We are thus also the "wanted" as declared on the posters.


I mounted the posters on pieces of plywood that have been distressed and look well used.

The exhibition is on from today 1st June till Sunday 7th June at The Changing Room Gallery with a reception/ event on Saturday 6th June.