Josef Strau at Vilma Gold
The milling mass pouring in and out of Vilma Gold's new space on Minerva Street - like a slow-moving spillage - is impressive given that the night before was the first of Time Out's 'firstthursdays' (East End galleries staying open late on the first Thursday of every month). But then this is the inaugural show, after all. On entry, I can only hope, for the survival of Josef Strau's collaborative lamp-like installation covering a section of floor, that the kind of dancing observed at the previous VG launch at Vyner Street is verboten. Looking back, the Vyner Street space seemed hangar-like in comparison, despite the same ubiquitous bodies bobbing around buckets of free beer. I remember a late-night scuffle as an onlooker launched a full beer bottle at one of Sophie von Hellerman's disaffected heroines. As the woman on the canvas dripped bashfully with booze, witnesses debated whether this really was a minor moment of art activism, an illegal dance move, or the sour-grapes response of a disgruntled contemporary lost in the wake of von Hellerman's star ascending.
Tonight, though, people are chattering about a post-PV dinner. After taking in this rather messy mix of photos, wall texts (some confessional, some critical, some in German, but all in an impossible font size designed to annoy the most loyal viewer), which seem more about the formal aesthetic possibilities of text than educational content, and curious bare-bulb anti-home-dec lamp objects, I take my leave well before lock down and head for the canal.
Despite the fact that MOT is a long-established feature on the East End art map, the approach to Regents Studios still feels slightly risky as you navigate the perimeter fence of this tenement block. But on an opening night the hoards hanging over the fifth-floor balcony are a bit of giveaway. Transition, on the second floor, also have an opening tonight, so from the outside the building appears as a giant urban sandwich supporting two layers of mixed human pickles.
Horror-film induced self-preservation kicks in to dictate the lift off bounds, but the passing traffic seems friendly enough. Up to MOT and the group show 'YouTubism' fits neatly amongst their broad, humorously inventive back catalogue. The queue for the new 'Backroom project space' (a sink and storage area housing Joe Walsh's irreverent Asian cinematic styling of Jack Nicholson's tortured writer in Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining') pokes from the plastic ribbons of its factory-style curtains like a line for the abattoir. The video is a little long, but worth the wait for the 'Kill Bill Vol. I' reference and no lives are lost.
Beagles & Ramsay at MOT
While queuing for a beer I become briefly involved in a soon-to-be divorced middle-aged man's hair traumas. The woman he is talking to seems unsure of his sincerity - his wife has been his sole hairdresser for some time it seems. He asks the woman how he would proposition a barber for an elaborately shaved spiral 'do'. Perhaps this hair anxiety has been prompted by the foppish wigs worn by collaborators Beagles and Ramsey - who appear buried up to their necks in gold glitter in their latest photographic self-portraits - or a maybe just a line?
In the front section of this tiny MDF warren, the throng plug in and out of Mark Bijl's three videos with alarming regularity. But it turns out they are all pretty short and not deeply offensive, or worse, dull. Bijl's brand of street activism unites the absurd cultures of celebrity and consumerism via tongue-in-cheek reportage and the music video. Bijl hand sprays a billboard poster of David Beckham with graffiti bullet holes to the strains of 'Zadok the Priest' (as re-tinkered for the Champions League) then proves, unsurprisingly, in a street documentary that the American public are more familiar with the likes of Paris Hilton than the heroes or victims of '9-11'. All three 'miniature solo exhibitions' fit reasonably well within the pervasive theme of self-promotion but Bijl takes the concept of media appropriation one step further rolling the promo, news item and subversive act into one indefinable advertorial.
Lee Maelzer
Tobi Deeson
Downstairs, Transition's latest offering 'Arboreal' pulls flora, fauna and all things folksy through a dark, morally ambiguous hedge - backwards. By now the audience is thinning, which is just as well, as through the gaps I get to see that Tobi Deeson's seemingly craft shop floral sprays have been lovingly hewn from polyfibrous bed sheets. Similarly, Debbie Lawson's carved, inlayed wood-panel narratives could be skilfully made, but rather tacky, Native American tourist art. But turn 360 from the large vista of wolves on a plain and you'll find that one has escaped: in a smaller piece a wolf man appears to be pleasuring (or raping?) a naked woman. Lee Maelzer's painting of a tree stump could be the site for a supernatural gathering, a lover's picnic or the scene of a crime. Her indescribably subtle palette pulls your narrative assessment through a range of fantastical, semi-feverish filters. Maelzer's rather tender digital prints of Christmas trees pit decorative garishness against the natural beauty of the firs to uncanny effect. The collective title 'Nine Christmases' characterises the tedium of the festive ritual while injecting a dose of ethereality into one's childhood memories. Sweet dreams, then.
Rebecca Geldard
Rebecca Geldard is a freelance writer and critic living in London.
Arboreal
Until 3 June
Transition
Unit 25a Regent Studios
8 Andrews Road
London E8
T: +44 (0O20 7254 4202
YouTubism
Until 10 June
MOT
Unit 54/5th floor Regents Studios
8 Andrews Road
London E8 4QN
T: +44(0)20 7923 9561
Josef Strau
Until 3 June
Vilma Gold
6 Minerva Street
London E2 9EH
T: +44 (0)207 729 9888
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