Gallery 46, a dynamic art exhibition space for emerging and contemporary artist supported by developer Londonewcastle​, has released its programme of summer events. The summer programme has a strong link with east London culture, showcasing the work of renowned artist, Chris Moon, and documentary photographer, David Hoffman, alongside multisensory, immersive works and events that take place between June and August.

The full summer programme is as follows: 

This is the Gate of Heaven

Until 7 July

Gallery 46, Whitechapel

A collaboration between Austrian artist Paul Renner and London artist Paul Sakoilsky

This is the Gate of Heaven, the first joint exhibition in London by artist-chef Paul Renner and contemporary artist Paul Sakoilsky. Gallery 46’s three adjoining Victorian townhouses has been transformed into a series of multi-dimensional installations and multi-sensory experiences placed in a series of seven rooms. Each room contains curiosities, such as a rococo compression chamber created to pay homage to collector and architect, Sir John Soane.

The Bourgeois-cockney finishing school is a hybrid of Renner’s bar and food installations and Sakoilsky’s still life paintings. This is the site of selected manifestations and readings and a place to relax in an atmosphere of terminally weird luxury. It is an environment in which the themes of heaven, hell, earth, transformation, corruption and conservation coil about each other in an air of heightened reality.

Also ‘The London Paintings Room’ features Sakoilsky’s recent work which draws inspiration from the London cityscape – ‘138 Balfron’ series, painted from his former studio in Erno Goldfinger’s Brutalist landmark in east London.

The duo first met working for Viennese Aktionnist, Hermann Nitsch in his Orginen Mysterien Theatre. Nitsch is a notably controversial Austrian artist of the 1960s and 1970s who is famous for his Dionysian “actions” in which people would bathe naked in the entrails of a freshly slaughtered lamb or pig.

Gallery 46 at Art Night 2018 – featuring Duggie Fields, Sean Dower and David James

7 July (6pm – 1am) | The Bargehouse, Southbank

During this year’s Art Night, London’s largest free contemporary arts festival along the river Thames, Gallery 46 will curate a one-off project at The Bargehouse, Southbank.

Three well known artists, Duggie Fields, David James and Sean Dower will come together for one night only to explore the landscape and construction of the city through a mix of multi-disciplinary works including digital film and music, black and white video with ambient sound and a series of drawings and paintings.

Duggie Fields, will be showcasing digital film and accompanying music that reflects his vibrant post pop paintings of the last five decades. Capturing elements of popular culture in iconography referencing; art, fashion, film, music and celebrity, the audio/ visual works are inspired by his unique life experiences.

Known as Spirit Level 1993, Sean Dower’s black and white video will display looping footage of Dower trying to maintain his balance with the glass section of a spirit level attached to his forehead. Initially the image looks motionless, but when the viewer looks closer, the motion of the bubble in the glass vial becomes mesmeric and the impossibility of absolute stillness becomes apparent.

Additionally, David James’ The End of Civilisation is a series of drawings and paintings that explore the relationship between personal experience and the history of art. James’s ‘drawings’ and ‘paintings’ are neither drawn or painted in the conventional sense. The drawings are the result of a meticulous sanding technique he uses to partially erase and modify the reproductions of masterpieces by artists such as Velázquez and Rembrandt, torn from the pages of vintage art books. This seemingly destructive act abstracts iconic works from the history of art, but in doing so James creates new images with new identities. The paintings are, in turn, fabricated objects made from digital enlargements of the drawings on archival canvas mounted to board, with the addition of layers of resin, hair and grit for added texture.

Monday Club

11 – 17 July | Gallery 46, Whitechapel

East London painter Chris Moon

The first exhibition since 2016, Monday Club is new series of paintings by renowned artist, Chris Moon whose work has been previously collected by Sir Paul McCartney, Gemma Arterton, Ed Sheeran and Michael Fassbender.

Monday Club is based on the artist’s daily journey from his Bethnal Green studio to London Fields Lido in East London. Studies created on a recent bank holiday Monday capture the fleeting mass invasion of park and pool on a single sun-drenched afternoon. Moon’s textured paintings, inclusive of his signature neon palette and deft handling of figure and space, result in a gentle, yet urgent, invitation to join him in this private journey of a recluse; pressed to question his own place in the madness. Monday Club is curated by Nina Pearlman (contemporary art curator, writer and lecturer as well as museum manager at UCL Culture).

A SORT OF HOME: 1970s Whitechapel 

18 July – 15 Aug | Gallery 46, Whitechapel

David Hoffman

David Hoffman, a London-based documentary photographer, will showcase two series of photographs taken in London’s East End in the 1970s.

One series of images will feature St Botolph’s Crypt wet shelter (a homeless shelter that previously provided non-judgement, food, warmth and medical support to vulnerable groups in the 1970s) and the other will feature Fieldgate Mansion (a row of Victorian mansions once occupied by squatters in the mid-1970s)  – both of which are within the locale of Gallery 46.

Hoffman’s raw, real life photographic style brings to light the scenes that are often forgotten today; documenting the East End in the 1970s showing it as a dark, yet culturally and socially diverse neighbourhood.

The St Botolph’s Crypt wet shelter is part of a Church of England parish church in the City of London. The church was under the management of Reverend Malcolm Johnson and the crypt supported vulnerable groups of people until Johnson retired in 1992 forcing the crypt to close.

Fieldgate Mansion, a row of Victorian mansions which still stands today, was occupied by squatters in the mid-1970s to prevent its demolition. The first people to occupy the flats were artists, mechanics, jewellers and writers, architects, escorts, dealers and photographers, including Hoffman himself. With almost 200 empty vacant and the Bengali community beginning to establish itself in the East End, Fieldgate became a safe, welcoming multicultural and secular neighbourhood. As so many times before, a new population took root as the original squatters moved on.

Liminality 3

16 Aug – 24 Aug |Gallery 46, Whitechapel

Curated by Sean McLusky, Kevin Quigley & Bjorn Hatleskog, Liminality 3 is the third in a series of exhibitions taking place at Gallery 46 that brings together a mix of cross-disciplinary works featuring experimental music, sound installations, sculptural installations and performance art. Alongside the curators, artists will also include Johnny Brown and Vic Goddard.

All exhibitions at Gallery 46 are free to attend. To view the full 2018 exhibition programme or to find out more about Gallery 46, visit http://gallery46.co.uk/ 

The Masque of Blackness

6 Sept – 6 Oct | Gallery 46, Whitechapel

Epoh Beech

More than 7 years in the making and inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Novella ‘Heart of Darkness’ and Ben Jonson’s Jacobean play ‘The Masque of Blackness’, Epoh Beech’s animated film will be screened at Gallery 46 later this summer. To accompany the film will be an extensive series of drawings and preparatory sketches of varying scale, detailing the journey of the painstakingly created animation.

‘The Masque of Blackness’ exhibition examines the geographical, historical and cultural relationship between the Thames and the Rhine, and between West Africa, England and Germany, with a vast series of sketches and drawings recurring motifs such as Shells, Hermes the Seal, Pegasus, Oil Rigs and water nymphs. These motifs appear in the final animated film and act as symbols of the imagination travelling freely.

Collaborators on the 12 minute animated film include; film editor Matthew Thomas; Danish musician Esben Tjalve who has composed a unique soundtrack; and Julia Gillespie, a former ballet dancer with Rambert Dance Company. The exhibition will also feature 3D paper maquettes made by Duncan Mude.

-ENDS-

Notes to editors

Contact:

For media enquiries regarding Gallery 46 and Londonewcastle, please contact Caro Communications on: 020 7713 9388

Charlotte Treadwell – charlotte@carocommunications.com

Alicia Yau – alicia@carocommunications.com

About Londonewcastle

Londonewcastle has created developments in the capital for the design-conscious for the past three decades. Their core belief is to bring outstanding architecture to mixed-use developments, delivering the highest quality buildings, public realms and cultural destinations.

Londonewcastle is currently building in 8 different London boroughs, with plans to deliver over 2,000 new homes across London in the next 5 years. Projects range from area regeneration, listed building restoration, affordable homes, public realm to education-led residential masterplans. Londonewcastle is committed to supporting contemporary art since its inception, both for established and emerging artists in London and internationally.

About Gallery 46

Gallery 46 is a Londonewcastle project space run in association with Martin J Tickner, Sean McLusky and Fruitmachine founders, Martin Bell and Wai Jung Young. The venue is continuing the legacy of Tickner and Mclusky’s previous gallery, MEN on Redchurch Street Shoreditch London.

Gallery 46, housed in a pair of renovated Georgian houses in the grounds of Whitechapel Hospital and set over 3 floors and 8 rooms is a kaleidoscopic addition to Whitechapel’s burgeoning gallery scene and its artistic heart, the nearby Whitechapel Gallery. Since it opened in October 2016, the gallery has hosted works by artists such as Iain Sinclair and Eley Kishimoto as well as successful exhibitions such as their first show, Autonomy.

About Paul Renner

Paul Renner lives in Bregenzerwald, Austria, and Piedmont, Italy. His exhibition projects culminate in the staging of theatrical soirées at which visual arts and performing arts are informed by culinary art and for which he designs buildings (Theatrum Anatomicum), stages festivals (Vakanz) and founds travel clubs (The Hell Fire Touring & Dining Club). He has presented projects at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Leo Koenig Gallery, the Kunsthalle Wien and collaborated with figures as diverse as Hermann Nitsch, Ferran Adrià, Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray.

About Paul Sakoilsky

Paul Sakoilsky is an artist / writer and editor of The Dark Times. Born in 1964, Sakoilsky was brought up in the Far East and East Anglia, where he created his first performance art works. Obsessed by poetry, Sakoilsky came to London in 1982, where he played in bands and made experimental films/audio-work, wrote prolifically, and met the poet George Barker (then in his 70s), who briefly became a mentor. From 2010-2012, he was Resident Artist at Red Gallery, Shoreditch, for whom he also co-curated the landmark show East End Promise: A Story of Cultural Migrants (Londonewcastle’s previous project space). His work is shown, published and collected internationally.

About Duggie Fields

Duggie Fields was born in 1945 and brought up in the village of Tidworth. He spent his youth in the countryside, moving to the outer suburbs of London in his adolescence. He studied architecture, briefly, at Regent Street Polytechnic before going to Chelsea School of Art in 1964 where he stayed for four years, before leaving with a scholarship that took him on his first visit to the United States. As a student his work moved from Minimal, Conceptual and Constructivist phases to a more hard-edge post-Pop figuration. By the middle of the 1970s his work included many elements that were later defined as Post-Modernism. In 1983 in Tokyo, a gallery was created especially for his show, and the artist and his work were simultaneously featured in a television, magazine, billboards and subway advertising campaign throughout the country. He started working with digital media in the late 1990’s describing his work in progress as Maximalist.

About Sean Dower

Sean Dower produces works in sculpture, photography, film, live performance and sound. Much of his work draws on his historical involvement in live performance.
 Dower was active in the UK, industrial music scene of the early 1980s and then worked with the radical performance art group, Bow Gamelan Ensemble. He studied Sculpture at Camberwell School of Art and Design and attended the Rijksakademie van Beeldenden Kunsten in Amsterdam. He has been presenting his work internationally in galleries, museums and other contexts since the early 1990’s. For his first solo exhibition, at Matt’s Gallery in London in 1997, Dower produced a site-specific, ‘3D’ Zombie film (No Room in Hell).

About David James 

David James is an artist living and working in London. During his career, he designed and art directed iconic imagery for musicians, publishers and brands, notably record sleeves for Soul II Soul, magazines for AnOther and advertisements for Prada. Over the past 8 years, he has developed a body of personal art work.

His practice consists of drawing, painting and assemblage. It is biographical in nature and utilises appropriated motifs from the history of art to explore subjects relating to personal experiences or current affairs. The work in Civilisation evolved from three separate disciplines – book collecting, mark-making and production. Together they form a mediation on the history of art, the human figure and iconography.

About Chris Moon 

Chris Moon is a self-taught British, contemporary artist with the unique ability to encompass a variety of techniques through vivid, emotional and at times, distinctly melancholic imagery expressed not only through images but the process in which he paints. His works often explore the painful, physical and emotional need for reinvention, resulting in his own mental state laid bare on the canvas.

It is his combination of insight and integrity, as well as psychological and emotional force, to the genre of figurative and abstract art that has set him apart from other emerging artists to date. A single painting often receives due attention whilst revisiting and resampling works from the past and present. He has been known to near complete a painting before scraping it back to a single mark and starting again.

His works are a journey without a definable end-point – an emotional dialogue if you will, between the self, the medium and the tool, to create new forms in a potentially infinite conceptual and physical process.

@MoonStudio.London

https://www.moonstudio.london/

About David Hoffman 

David Hoffman has worked as an independent photojournalist since the 1970s. Supplying media through his photo library, he has always chosen his own subject matter. Driven to document the increasingly overt control of the state over our lives, his work sheds an unforgiving light across racial and social conflict, policing, drug use, poverty and social exclusion.

Protest, and the violence that sometimes accompanies it, is a thread that has run through Hoffman’s work, gaining him a reputation as ‘the riot photographer’s riot photographer.’  The same determination and willingness to look uncomfortable realities in the eye are evident in his photographs of homeless people using open and unregulated shelters offering support and respite.

Working to document the reality of injustice, the frequent oppression of the state and the all too often tragic consequences, Hoffman’s photography has underpinned legal challenges, brought racist perpetrators to justice, and reached wide audiences through newspaper publication for more than 40 years.

About Epoh Beech 

Epoh Beech studied as a fine artist in Florence, at Cheltenham Art School and Chelsea College of Art. She has an MA in Art Therapy from the University of Hertfordshire and works out of the ACAVA studios in West London.

She has completed five major series of works, each follow a journey, tell a story, and illustrate a particular poem or Jacobean “Masque”. Each has been exhibited in either London or Oxford. The work is strongly influenced by the narrative force and the quest for the sublime through the balance of colour and light most evident in the work of 15th Italian Renaissance and German Romantic painters.

The recent series in animated drawing explores the relationship between still images, moving images and music. Beech hand draws the animations in charcoal on paper using a palimpsest technique, inspired by the animations of William Kentridge and the photography of Hiroshi Sugimoto. The depiction of darkness, shadows and black found in the etchings of Goya and Samuel Palmer, the drawings of George Seurat and the films of Lotte Reineger have greatly informed her practice.