Thursday, September 21, 2006


Vacuous Vyner

In this week's Time Out Sarah Kent reviews Vyner Street. Almost inevitably the review annoyed me, it is so easy for her to bluster over the whole of the London contemporary art scene call it vacuous and compare it to the eighties before the stock market crash. This is not the art scene I recognise where we struggle to afford to put on shows by really interesting artists. All those spaces should be applauded I thought. And then this afternoon I had to go to Vyner Street for the first time for ages and I think she is just about right. Although there are good individual pieces of work, overall the street has a really nasty air, a kind of how dare you come into this gallery, who do you think you are attitude about it.

So my advice this weekend is to have a quick look at Vyner Street but then come over to the spaces where the real excitement is. At Transition it is the last week of Laura White's fabulous 'Into the Cold Light', a magical installation of discarded electrical goods and phosphorescent sea creatures, whilst upstairs from us is MOT which has a really interesting sounding Casper David Friedrich show on, oh and then there is Cell + Flaca and it looks like there is something going on in Ada Street and so many others.