Detail from Just in Time by Wilhemina Barns-Graham. Courtesy of Leyden Gallery
Prints by one of the central figures in the story of British modern art are to be displayed alongside an exhibition of rich and luxuriant watercolours by London-based artist Roxy Walsh at the Leyden Gallery this month.
Wilhemina Barns-Graham, who died in 2004, produced significant work in her eighties during the last decade of her life. Having built a reputation as an abstract painter, from 1991 until her death started producing screen prints at a prolific rate. It was a creatively liberating period of her artistic life, and capturing her own brush marks on acetate led her to make prints that were an embodiment of her painting style.
In Roxy Walsh’s Two Tongues Tied exhibition, shown alongside the Barns-Graham prints, watercolours on various surfaces feature women who are intensely and sensuously coloured yet frozen in their attempts to make meaning, described by the artist as being “present yet inchoate”.
Roxy Walsh Two Tongues Tied and Wilhemina Barns-Graham Prints is at Leyden Gallery 9/9a Leyden Street, E1 7LE until 8 March.
Harry Young, alias Diamond Lil, stands at the centre of photograph taken on VE Day 8 May 1945 on Columbia Road. From left kneeling; Gladys Herd, Mrs Stephens, Isabella Wilkinson, Clara Hoare, Nell Lloyd, Diamond Lil, Isabella Lloyd, Alice Wilkinson. Photograph: Marie Stephens
Linda Wilkinson is an East Ender born and bred and a true Renaissance woman.
A human rights activist, she spent 30 years working full-time as a research scientist before penning a play about Diamond Lil (based on the true story of an East End drag queen whose real name was Harry Young) as well as several books.
‘Lil’ crops up in Columbia Road: A Strange Kind of Paradise. She is pictured showing some leg amid of a crowd of women celebrating VE Day in 1945.
“What did people make of it?” the author writes. “It seems nobody was much bothered. As a child I was eight before I learned Lil was a bloke and then only because one of the boys at school told me.”
Salt-of-the-earth inhabitants of the East End were, and probably still are, much more tolerant than they are given credit for. In Columbia Road this easy-going mindset helped foster the bohemian trappings the street displays today.
Part memoir, part quirky, unclichéd history, this self-published book is a cornucopia of historical anecdotes, containing photographs and reminiscences from the author’s fellow Columbia Road natives.
The roots of the street’s famous flower market are shrouded in mystery, though records show it was already in existence in the 1800s.
Precisely when and why it sprouted remains a matter of debate as poverty-stricken East Enders were not archetypal bloom-fanciers, though Wilkinson cites Victorian journalist Henry Mayhew’s observation that pretty plants are comforting to people who spend long hours labouring indoors.
What is clear is there is more to Columbia Road than flowers. Over the decades it has played host to silk weavers, body-snatchers, child murderers and Huguenot and Jewish refugees.
It was a focus of the efforts of social reformers and philanthropists like Angela Burdett-Coutts and was part of the route from Essex into London travelled by thousands of farm workers leading their livestock to the slaughter.
For much of its history Columbia Road hardly smelt of roses; close-by there was in Dickens’s time a vast and stinking ‘dung heap’.
But despite its flaws the area has always inspired great loyalty among its residents.
It is indeed a strange kind of paradise.
Columbia Road: A Strange Kind of Paradise is published by Linda Wilkinson. ISBN: 9780957329423. RRP: £12.99
William Morris takes direct action with Roman Abramovich’s yacht in painting by Jeremy Deller
Celebrated conceptual artist Jeremy Deller has brought his exhibition for the British Pavilion at last year’s Venice Biennale to Walthamstow.
Climbing the steps of the cosy William Morris Gallery, you find yourself caught between two giant banners in the midst of heated discussion. Resembling African tribal masks, these banners are expressions of the twin evils of corporate tax avoidance and permissive tax havens. Designed by trade union artist Ed Hall, they are but one piece in Deller’s grand prophecy of the fall of capitalism in the not too distant future.
Deller’s exhibition is called ‘English Magic,’ but perhaps ‘English Anger’ would have been more appropriate. He draws upon the fantastical and mythological as a means of expressing his fury at an unjust world in which capital begets capital, which then begets power, and finally suffering.
In his ground floor exhibition, there are two murals painted on the wall, both featuring the revenge of the oppressed proletariat. In one, William Morris, champion of socialism, emerges from the Venetian waters like Poseidon to discard the mega yacht of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich that, in 2011, docked by Venice’s Biennale Gardens, blocking the view and causing consternation among residents and tourists. Jeremy Deller said: “For me William Morris is a fascinating character who wore his heart on his sleeve, mixing politics and art in a way no one has managed to since.”
The other mural is an illustration of a prophetic political demonstration in 2017 on the notorious tax haven island of Jersey. The story is as follows: the people of Britain descend on the town of St Helier, outraged by the continued secrecy and irresponsibility of the country’s wealthy, and the demonstration quickly becomes violent. The burning house in St Helier depicted in the mural is symbolic of the collapse of modern capital-centric society.
A floor above, Deller moves from the near future to the recent past: The Iraq War. Here, the dark arts of English Magic are conjured in drawings by prisoners in the UK, many of whom former soldiers, of the war’s key figures and events. And then there’s the centerpiece: a video of Britain’s birds (and many other things) scored to South London’s Melodians Steel Orchestra interpretation of ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ by David Bowie.
Anna Mason, curator at the gallery, reports that visitors are flocking to Walthamstow’s art hub in “record-breaking numbers”. Over 2000 came to see English Magic last weekend, with a great response following rave reviews.
The exhibition is missing the piece ‘A Good Day for Cyclists’ – an important part of Deller’s Venice showcase that couldn’t fit in the Walthamstow gallery. English Magic is nevertheless provocative, interesting and righteously angry.
English Magic is at William Morris Gallery Lloyd Park, Forest Road, E17 4PP until 30 March.
Sea fare: Platterform’s latest pop-up is decidedly fishy
Well it looks like the howling gales and driving rain of the past months are showing no sign of letting up, so we’d better find some nice places to hibernate until spring comes.
And I can’t think of a more suitable way to shelter from the mid-Atlantic storms bashing the city than with a seafood-themed popup from the same team that brought us the fantastic lumberjack bar – Skylodge – before Christmas.
This time the Platterform collective has magicked the London Fields rooftop into a barnacle-clad ship, decked out with rigging, compasses and salty little sea shacks. Lasting 15 weeks, the Sea Adventure Series will see a series of guest chefs taking up residency to dish up a succession of sensational fish suppers.
Taking the helm for the Maiden Voyage section of the programme are in-house chefs Michele Sweetman and Leona Williams. The inspiration for their menu is the NorthWest Passage – the Arctic waterways that connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans – playing on Dutch, Scandinavian and British palates.
We kicked off with a magnificent little bowl of smoked haddock chowder with juicy little nuggets of sweetcorn and some lovely savoury scone-like ships biscuits. It was hot and hearty and fully delicious.
Next we walked the plank. Or ate the plank. A plank of dark rye bread that is, with fat pink curls of honey-pickled Scottish salmon, crunchy beetroot salad and sweet little gherkins. It looked beautiful, the fish tasted as fresh as if it had just jumped from the water and onto plate and it tasted all kinds of lovely.
It’s a four-course set menu including drinks and portions are decent without being overbearing – which is lucky, because next comes the Lekkerbek. Or Dutch fish and chips to me and you – with a remoulade sauce made from mayonnaise, sage, tarragon. The little bowl of emerald petit pois with onion and sage was a lovely play on mushy peas. The batter was delicate – not overwhelming the tender flaky fish as it often can. Pudding was a delicious creamy key limey pie.
If that’s not enough to tickle your kipper, the cocktails coming out of the Shanty Shack will certainly put hairs on your chest. We tried the Zissou Sour – a fiery little concoction of egg whites and mezcal and there are plenty of others to stick your oar in.
The next chapter in this seafood adventure is Maid in the Mist, with Dave Yorkston of Yorkston Smokehouse setting up his own cold smoking house up on the rooftop. His fare is reportedly so good he sells it to his own fishmonger, so it’s definitely worth checking out.
If the Sea Adventure Series is anything like as popular as Skylodge you better fix up look sharp and get yourselves some tickets. Walk-ins also welcome to pitch up and hang out at the bar with drink and snacks.
Horse Power: The Blackhorse Workshop wants us to get practical. Photograph: Jim Stephenson
Relying on Youtube videos to do jobs around the house such as putting up curtains or fixing a chair is not unusual, though it’s ironic how these newly-established technologies are being used to learn practical skills that have seemingly been around since the dawn of time.
Blackhorse Workshop in Walthamstow is out to address the problem. The newly opened building seeks to channel the spirit of public libraries by becoming a place for shared knowledge, with tools, machinery and skilled technicians on hand to offer advice and assistance to members of the public.
Housed in a former industrial building specially converted by architecture and design collective Assemble, the workshop has been running talks, classes and events since last November, but officially launched last month at an event that saw Waltham Forest Council Leader Chris Robbins ceremoniously cut a ‘ribbon’ made of wood using a saw.
At the launch, workshop volunteers busied themselves making individual letters for the workshop’s sign. Zakiyma, 19, an architecture student, is busy fashioning the letter ‘R’ using rope lighting backed on to wood. “The best thing is that you get to see what other people are doing,” she said. Aaron, 24, is a prop-maker, but doesn’t have the space or resources to experiment at home. He said: “There are some really good teachers here and you can learn metal work, gilding and lighting.”
Given Walthamstow’s arts and crafts and manufacturing heritage, the workshop is well-situated, and the two-storey space will lend resources, including wood and metal working equipment, as well as offer space for assembly and construction.
Maria Lisogorskaya, director of Assemble, claims the workshop is about making resources available to more people. “We want the public workshop to integrate the knowledge of tactile processes into everyday city life,” she says.
Members of the public are welcome to visit the workshop, including the café and bar run by Hornbeam Bakers Collective. Using the bench space does come at a cost, however. A one-off day membership is 18 per day, though regular membership works out cheaper and discounts are available for those on a low income, recently graduated or out of work.
Bloody revenge and stage violence are par for the course in Jacobean tragedies, but a new version of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi intends to balance the macabre with a nuanced exploration of gender.
The play, in which the marriage of the Duchess to someone beneath her social class leads to her brothers exacting revenge, has been reinterpreted as a ‘transgender fable’, with a new title, Cover Her Face, and third gender performer La JohnJoseph playing the lead.
The adaptation, to be staged this month at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, moves the play from the court of Amalfi some 500 years ago to London’s east end at the tail end of the 1950s.
“We’re setting it in this gay gangster socialite criminal underworld,” explains La JohnJoseph, a performance artist and writer who divides his time between East London and Berlin.
“We’re exploring the same power dynamics but with a new aesthetic. It’s all fifties – the music, the costumes, everything. We’ve been studying dialects and accents; half the cast will be speaking with Cockney accents, which are very different from contemporary ones, and the rest will have this Mayfair-type accent. We’re hoping to dislocate people’s understanding of the play when they come and see it like this.”
Jacobean drama has always lent itself to gender discourse. Women, in the 17th century, were not permitted to act on stage, so plays were written with men playing female characters in mind.
Taking its lead from this, La JohnJoseph will be the only non-male member of the cast. “I’m in the middle, in that shimmering grey area,” he quips. “There are no straight female roles at all, so all of the interactions have become very queered.
“There are some incestuous undertones, bisexual undertones and transgender ones – it’s quite a free for all and I think it’s very timely actually that we’re doing the piece like this.”
La JohnJoseph cites Australian supermodel Andrej Pejic as an example of how transgender people are coming to the forefront of public consciousness. “People are aware not only of the right of transsexual people who change their gender but also that the gender spectrum is wider than previously acknowledged,” he says.
In the original play, the Duchess suffers for marrying someone from the lower classes. In Cover Her Face (the new title is from a line in the play) the emphasis is on the Duchess trying to live as a woman against the wishes of her conservative brothers.
“Gender is a cornerstone of how we understand ourselves and in this play everyone is trying to shut the Duchess up and lock her away,” La JohnJoseph says.
“I’ve most definitely channelled my experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant, of being a gender non-conformist into this role.”
Cover Her Face is at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 42 Pollard Street, E2 6NB from 10-15 February.
A folk group based in Walthamstow, credited with popularising Balkan music in the UK, is celebrating its half-centenary this year and hopes to endure with the help of young and talented artists.
Dunav, a collective taking its name from the Serbo-Croat word for the River Danube, formed in 1964 and has seen more than 30 members pass through its esteemed ranks.
Established by Balkan dance enthusiasts Henry Morris, John Baldwin and Narendra Kotiyan, the group – who used to practise at Hackney Community College on Falkirk Street – cite friendship as key to their success.
Caroline Thomas, who joined as accordionist in 1971, says: “I count Dunav members as my very best friends and sometimes, when I am making music with them, the thought comes into my head that I would not want to be anywhere else doing anything else.”
Dunav began when folk-aficionado Morris met mandolin-player Baldwin, who had fallen for Balkan music in 1952 following a late-night encounter with four dancers at a Yorkshire youth camp.
Kotiyan, the present ensemble’s longest-serving member, was born in Mumbai and moved to England in 1957. He attended various folk dancing clubs in London before meeting Baldwin and becoming part of Dunav’s original line-up.
The founders took their authentic brand of eastern European music to London’s School of Pharmacy for their first performance. Soon after, they organised a successful Balkan music and dance festival at St Pancras Town Hall (now the Camden Centre).
The group has since embarked on a series of European tours and played regular slots at Cecil Sharp House (a dedicated folk arts centre) and the Barnet International Folk Dance Club, as well as countless weddings, concerts and parties.
“Tours to Bulgaria, Romania and the Republic of Macedonia were wonderful, and happily we have much of it recorded on video,” says Thomas.
“A full-length concert in the Purcell Room on the South Bank was the fulfilment of an ambition of mine, and there we launched our first CD – a compilation of two earlier albums.”
Helped along by much encouragement from folklorists and musicians of the countries whose music they play, the group have encountered very little controversy over the years.
“We would hope that folk music is above politics, and try to ignore the occasional negative mutterings of people with strong feelings about national and regional identity.”
Thomas says that after half a century of performing the music they love and inspiring others to do the same, as long as the current members can lift and play their instruments the group will continue.
“The more distant future of Dunav depends on young talented musicians and singers joining us, and we would welcome them provided they fit in and are truly committed,” she says.
For an industry in which ‘change’ is the word on the tip of everyone’s tongue, longevity is a rarity these days. But with the passion and energy of Dunav, another 50 years looks well on the cards.
The friends continue to rehearse on a weekly basis at Thomas’s house in Walthamstow.
See here for a video of Dunav performing in Romania in 1993.
Adrian Richards and Alix Ross star in Advice for the Young at Heart. Photograph: Sarah London
Much has been said and written about the riots which swept London in 2011. Everyone from politicians to social workers have voiced their opinions on the state of our youth and their future.
Attempting to get to grips with these issues, Advice for the Young at Heart sets out to examine both contemporaneous teenage experiences and young struggles from a previous era.
Award-winning playwright Roy Williams sets the scene with simultaneous plots relating the 1958 Notting Hill race riots and the events of 2011, telling its story through the eyes of 17 to 21-year-old characters.
The play, commissioned by the Shoreditch based Theatre Centre, features a cast of four relatively undiscovered emerging talents and specifically targets young audiences aged 14 and over.
This need to appeal to a current audience is reflected in segments of dialogue such as this from the sole female part, Candice: “Join a crew, you get family. You get brers who will die for you. Stand up for you. You get respect.”
Given the widespread frustration and disillusionment that large sections of inner city youth have recently expressed combined with the perception they are being ostracised, the goal of catering a play towards them is particularly ambitious.
With the direction and target of Roy Williams’ writing in mind, the acid test for the production will be the response of young people.
So far the play is doing well, with its autumn tour of schools and public venues across the country being extended to the spring.
A promotional YouTube video features a teacher of Year 11 drama students, who said: “It’s a piece of theatre which genuinely appeals to a young audience, which they didn’t find patronising or boring.”
The same clip also features pupils describing the production with words such as ‘amazing, brilliant, real, educational, moving, refreshing and emotional.’
While any such public airing will clearly highlight the most positive views, the fact that so many teenagers seem to relate to the play is notable.
Beyond the theatre, the need for young people to find their place in the world remains as strong as ever, especially after the London riots, and any attempt to encourage this is worthy of some attention.
Despite opening in only 2011, Oval Space is already one of London’s hottest night spots. Its industrial setting in Bethnal Green, overlooking a disused gasworks, rivals Hackney Wick for gritty urban chic, and the 6,000 square foot warehouse-style space affords mesmeric views over East London.
It’s not the views, however, that make Oval Space regularly full to capacity. Jordan Gross, 29, is co-director of the venue alongside his business partner Daniel Sylvester, 28. It was their vision to transform a warehouse once used to stock pharmaceutical supplies into a top class music and arts venue.
“We felt London needed more good entertainment spaces and that this could be one of those places,” says Gross. “But as with all of these things, what you end up with is a lot different to what you think it’s going to be in the first place.”
A successful 2013 saw Thom Yorke, Bookashade, Cutcopy and Giorgio Moroder perform. Oval Space also has monthly cinema screenings from independent filmmakers and hosts one-off events such as this month’s TED event. Incongruously enough, you can also get married there.
At 29, Gross is intimidatingly successful. He used to own a telecoms company and started his first business as a teenager. With Oval Space, however, he’s looking to embrace a slightly older and wiser crowd.
“You’ve got to try and elevate the conversation a bit in terms of this nightlife thing,” he says. “We make sure that when you come here you’re having a really great experience, so the toilets are nice, the food and drinks are good and everything’s reasonably priced.”
Drawing on his experience in other international cities such as Berlin, Gross calls London “a world class city without world class night life”, and has made it Oval Space’s mission to redress the balance.
This is not merely a case of attracting the biggest names – although they are doing that – or hosting shows by outside promoters. These days Gross and his team want to develop their own events in-house, taking advantage of the fact that nobody knows the space like they do.
For Gross this is part of a wider philosophy. “In my view we’ve got to get back to having venues and clubs and places where you trust their curation and you’ll go along no matter what,” he says.
In February begins Oval Space Music – Chapter 1, a grand title matching Gross’s ambition. Detroit techno pioneers Robert Hood and Jerome Sydenham will be part of a line-up that includes sets from the Oval Space’s new resident DJs, jozif and Fritz Zander.
Gross adds: “We’d like to bring more interesting things to the audience and stuff that’s really very good but you just haven’t heard of it yet. That’s essential I think.”
Loud, proud and psychedelic, Oscar Suave are looking to serve up East Londoners with a slice of rock ‘n’ roll.
It seems psychedelic bands nowadays have fallen down the pecking order when it comes to East London’s underground music scene.
There is, however, a passionate and bustling sub-culture out there, with Oscar Suave one of the promising local acts determined to bring psychedelia up to date.
“We are loud – very loud,” says Oliver Davitt, singer-songwriter and founder of the three-piece outfit and self-proclaimed ‘fuzz band’. “We are pretty energetic with quite a carefree approach, we love to play live, it’s our favourite thing to do.”
Two out of three of the band members Erick Antoine and Gal Cohen, originally from France and Israel respectively, now reside in Hackney, while Davitt himself lived in Bethnal Green for years. “We rehearse there and most of our gigs are in East London,” he says.
With a very mature yet wildly imaginative sound, Oscar Suave sound straight out of the original psychedelic rock era. “The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd and The Doors are my most influential bands at this present moment,” says Davitt.
“Erick knows loads of unknown sixties’ psychedelic music and he always sends me stuff to listen to. Sweet Smoke have an amazing sound and they have 30 minute songs. It’s great!”
It wasn’t easy to get to a sound they could truly feel at home with. Since their inception in 2010, the band have gone through several line-up changes and, after three years of experimenting with different styles, they are now sounding tighter and louder than they ever have.
Harsh but dreamy vocals and emotive lyrics are the main staple of their melodic and sometimes darkly orphic tracks, to the extent that it’s a wonder to think how they go about the writing process.
“It’s normally triggered from a feeling or stuff running through my head. Some songs have taken five minutes to write, some have taken months. I still have unfinished songs that are four years old. There’s no real formula – it just kind of happens.”
