A few weeks back a group from our class decided to go to Vyner St. I discovered the area when I first moved to London. An old warehouse street, it had been turned into an art hub full of galleries utilising the cheap rent and big abandoned spaces. I was a little surprised a few of my classmates hadn’t heard about it before so, I thought, why not bring them to a first thursday! For some reason the street looked rather desolate when we arrived. I had expected huge bustling crowds to be bursting out of each exhibition, yet it had an air of its original abandonment.
East london has been renowned for its emerging artists before even the YBA’s came on the scene but I began to think, as we wandered through each opening, that maybe the east London art scene was loosing some of its lustre. The exhibitions we visited that day were pretty substandard and but then, nearing the end of our expedition, we came across a gallery space called HADA contemporary. First opening its doors in Mayfair in 2010, I assumed this east london space was a new extension.
The gallery is purely aimed at cultivating the “dialogue between the far east and europe by firmly positioning the art of each culture into the artistic hub of the other”. It was a solo opening for artist Park Seungmo. His work stopped us all in our tracks. The first piece you are confronted with when you walk in is a giant 3D wire mesh ‘drawing’ of an upside down face. We spent about 10 minutes discussing how the artist could possible have made it. This is always a good testament to the artists skill. The other works were more focused on wire wrapping around objects including a grand piano, a Chapman-esq sculpture made up of 6 children stuck together and a life sized adult sculpture. The last piece had the wire wrapped all the way then ripped down. The artists also included a video of how he made his work, which was probably the most fascinating question to come out of the exhibition. The skill level and persistence of the artist to the aesthetic he created was fascinating. I have never had this kind of patience as an artist but perhaps its skill I need to learn! The show is still on so I highly recommend a look.
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