WE LIKE OUR MESSY STREET
So what have we been doing at Cultivate in the last couple of weeks then? Well if you haven’t been following us on Facebook, then Other social networks are apparently available and last month’s show (and very busy opening night, no doubt boosted by invites sent out via social media) does throw a lot of questions out there. The two-man show threw out a challenge or two and Facebook has become a dangerously powerful force, you might go as far as to say it is for some people, their whole way of interacting, of communicating, would they/we be lost without it now? ELLIOT JONES and SAMUEL DILLLON’s impressively compact and rather well received exhibition/installation OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE AVAILABLE: THE CULL opened at Cultivate a couple of Thursdays back and ran at the gallery during the final week of what has been a very very productively busy October down on our corner of the street.
OTHER NETWORKS….
Our rather deliberately diverse October started off with the street art flavoured can manipulation of MYDOG SIGHS and his friends, the In Rust We Trust show, queues that started in the morning for the show’s (First Thursday) evening opening and an exciting week that has already been well documented via previous posts on these pages. We like it when art excites people, we like all the engagement and energy, the beautiful chaos that comes as part of it all, we like it when art engages with audience, we like it when art excites people, we like it busy and full of enthusiastic people…
DAY OF THE DEAD opening night, 1st November – Dirty Yellow Flower (Sean Worrall)
October continued with the two week Cultivation show, six artists sharing the walls, the plinths, the attitude and something that might have been viewed as a little more painterly and deliberately contemporary after the cans of the week before. We are mostly about painting at Cultivate, we are both painters ourselves, this time we invited four other artists to join us for a couple of weeks – it was a pleasure to have more from DAVID AGENJO, more from EMMA BUGGY and the challenge of her giant pink nipple cake, her vagina shoes and her ‘titwank’. MADELEINE STRINDBERG’s rabbits were part of the Cultivation show; her rabbits in turn delighted, enraged, confused, compounded, confronted, complimented. Madeleine’s work excites me, her freedom, her expanse, her guts, her uncluttered simplicity, her controlled energy, her unbound own way. Her art needs far more space and freedom that we can really offer it in our confined space, her art needs far more respect than we can realistically offer it. Cultivate can be a frustrating space at times, we are well aware of that fact. Madeleine’s rabbits were far too crowded, we’ve said many times that too crowded and too busy is the only real way to use this space we have right now. It won’t always be this way, Cultivate will move on again and again, new walls, new space, new cities? For now we have a messy space in Vyner Street (and all that comes with being right in the middle of Vyner Street)
EMMA BUGGY’S NIPPLES
Cultivate can be a frustrating space at times, we’re well aware of that fact. I like to think we use it in the most positive way that the scuzzy little white brick-walled room can be used. Cultivate, right now, is a place that needs to be alive with attitude and energy, it needs to be an exciting, ever evolving space that hopefully excites as much as it provokes, that inspires as much as it contradicts. I’d like to think that in the fourteen months that we have now been defiantly standing on our corner, that we’ve added some much-needed colour to what can sometimes be a rather dull and artistically conservative street…. Don’t miss=understand, I do love the diversity of the street, do like (nearly) all the different shapes, the sizes and the attitudes from the fifteen or so different galleries that current share the disunited street. love everything that has happened over the road at Hada Contemporary, Wayward has been especially good this last month or so (loved SYLVIE TILLMANN‘s show), don’t know what’s happened to Degree Art, they seem to have given up on the street this year, do enjoy escaping to the open space of Wilkinson in the hope of something that matches the expanse of their building, I’m excited by the two new galleries that are being made ready in the street right now, I like this street, I like the dirt, the mess, the bits of taxi, the indigence of the disapproving art snobs, the banter from the locals in the pub . Really don’t like the attitude of the man in the corner, why do you artists all seem to want to line up to give him your money? Didn’t you notice that his much hyped salon show hardy ever actually opened? Or the bad photoshop hash-up of a big poster outside his gallery door that shows his gallery door with all the plush signs that don’t actually exist in reality on said (always closed) door? He didn’t even bother opening for First Thursday? Why was that all about? Ever get the feeling you’re being cheated? Do sometimes think some of you artists almost deserve what you get from people like the man in the corner…
DAY OF THE DEAD opening night, 1st November
Enough of the dubious goings on in the corner and his closed First Thursday doors, on our corner is was DIA DE LOS MUERTOS and our celebration of the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead/ Artists were invited, colour was encourage, flowers tied to our window bars, a shire built, Mexican sweet bread, fruit, the ritual, and our walls full of are that in some way came with a little of the right flavours, I think we can say it worked, people grabbed the spirit and hopefully enjoyed the art, the paintings of LISA McKENDRICK, BLAKKBIRD, CHARLIE McFARLEY, SEAN WORRALL, TONY LEE and EMMA HARVEY, the prints of ROBERT FORD and LYNNE BLACKBURN, the ceramics of CARRIE REICHARDT, the letterpress work of JULIETA HERNANDEZ ADAME, DAVID VASSIE, DANNY AMOS FLYNN – a spontaneous show pulled together because it seemed like a good thing to do, it could have been a disaster, I kind of think it worked… didn’t it?
DAY OF THE DEAD opening night, 1st November – Dirty Yellow Flower (Sean Worrall)
Had a journalist on the phone asking about East End art and what I thought about the White Cube closing. Frankly couldn’t care less about the White Cube, doesn’t really matter if the Cube is there or not, this side of London has surely always been about artists coming together and doing it themselves, not about fancy galleries who moved in on the back of all that original 90’s artist-driven energy, fancy art-establishment white cubes and the sharp-suited gallery lizards that inhabit them, mostly to sell art to Russian football team owners and such. They are the establishment now, they surely should be moving on and out and leaving it with us scumbag loudmouth artists…. the thing that concerns me far more than the cubes and such, is the lack of artists just getting out and doing it for themselves, creating spaces, bringing them to life, taking on the challenge, putting energy in to galleries and DIY spaces, the walls, and the billboards, making their own rules up…. no, really couldn’t really care less about the White Cube or any of the other white cubes, I am far far more concerned about the real lack of artists really wanting to make things happen, wanting to get out there and come together and just do it, daring to create the events that once lead to the rise of the white cubes in the first place…
NEW GALLERY SPACES TAKING SHAPE IN VYNER STREET – Movember 4th 2012
It starts with artists doing it themselves, getting out there and making mistakes, getting out there and exciting people, just getting out there… Where are you all? When we opened Cultivate we really did think you’d be coming at us in waves, we didn’t think we have to do it all ourselves, we didn’t expect to have to battle with so much conservative apathy, surely art is about a bit more than a free beer with your ex student mates on a Thursday night? The White Cube was years ago, they’re probably right to be moving on, where’s the new energy? The artists bringing the galleries and spaces to life, making it exciting again? You can’t all be busy being duped by the man in the corner and paying him to give you his dubious ‘career advise’ can you? Here’s some for free, keep hold of your money and so it yourself, get involved in the artist-run spaces that already exist, start your own, become part of making something happen, come on, where are you?
LYNNE BLACKBURN screenprints, Cultivate, November 2012
CULTIVATE... Artists doing it our way 
interesting blog Sean