East End Review

Tag: Clapton

Shadow Optics at Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes, Clapton: Things falling apart

An excerpt from Solveig Settemsdal’s Segment I.I.

The art world today is so vast that it’s impossible for any one individual to have a complete understanding of everything that’s going on at one moment,” says the gallerist Iavor Lubomirov.

Lubomirov is director of Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes in Lower Clapton, which describes itself as a “charitable venue for curators” rather than a traditional gallery.

“Commercial galleries tend to have a stable of artists they show regularly big institutions are usually looking retrospectively at artists careers, so that puts us in a unique position,” he says.

Shadow Optics is the gallery’s latest venture into curation. It brings together four relatively unknown artists and is curated by CJ Mahony, a sculptor who runs an archaeological project space in Cambridge.

“She’s interested in things that have a sense of delicacy about them so as if they’re about to fall apart, barely holding together, and she’s also interested in light (which is fairly common among artists anyway). It’s these two themes she’s trying to bring together in this show.”

Among the artists featuring in the exhibition is Solveig Settemsdal, whose work exists in a hinterland between drawing, sculpture and photography. She uses materials that are easily affected by their surroundings – giving sculpture an almost liquid quality.

“I think if you at Solveig’s photos they’re fascinating because you have no idea how they’re created or what they are but there’s a sense of things floating in outer space or underwater,” says Lubomirov.

“It could be like an atomic explosion it could be an organic animal or an alien – whatever it is it looks like it’s about to float away and you’ve caught it at this precious moment of existence.”

The group show also includes work by Georgie Grace, whose videos look into technological change and our tolerance for flickering light.

A still from Georgie Grace’s Shedding.

And Reece Jones makes drawings that start off whimsical but which undergo repeated application and removal until they evolve into a finished image that is difficult to define.

“Of course the thing is these are artists who are not represented by our gallery or who are necessarily going to be seen together again, Lubomirov says.

“It is a moment that will come and then disappear.”

Shadow Optics
3–25 September
Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes
26 Lower Clapton Road
E5 0PD
lubomirov-angus-hughes.com

August 24, 2016
Café SoVegan, Clapton, restaurant review – ‘a project to be heralded’

A selection of Café SoVegan’s comfort food. Photograph: Jade King

I am not a vegan. I feel at pains to open this review with this fact, especially as I arrived at Café SoVegan’s home, the Royal Sovereign pub on Northwold Road, with my girlfriend. She follows the vegan diet that I sometimes feel I should follow too, given the often catastrophic environmental impacts of meat consumption, not to mention my waistline.

Nonetheless I felt on more familiar ground once I’d figured out that, aside from the open kitchen and serving area, this café is situated in a classic London boozer. There’s a spacious beer garden (festooned with posters advertising charity drives and the local cricket club) and a covered area where we chose to plonk ourselves. There, we mulled over the daily specials board, before deciding the main menu was too generously stocked with options (pancakes! a burrito! how on earth do they make quiche?) to overlook.

We ordered four dishes, all to arrive at once. My partner let me have the first bite of the Café SoVegan Seitan Burger, which we both ended up considering the standout of the afternoon. Not to bring things back to meat unnecessarily, but the seitan (a ‘meat’ made from the protein in wheat) had a firm texture and meaty succulence that was really a revelation – especially for my dining partner, a veteran of many a flavourless vegan mush-burger.

The patty is perfectly seasoned and peppery to boot, and the optional guacamole served as an extra ace-in-the-hole (vegan cheese and/or bacon can also be added.) At £5.50, it’s excellent quality and value for any kind of burger in the capital, and it comes with a wonderfully fresh Hackney Salad, comprising leaves plucked from Growing Communities, the Stoke Newington social enterprise and organic veg connaisseurs.

Special diet: a selection of the daily specials at Café SoVegan. Photograph: Jade King

I had the Mac ‘no’ Cheese: visually the same, if not as the luminous boxed variety, as the snappily packaged Mac ‘n’ Cheeses you see served at various London watering-holes. (Refreshingly, the portions here are much bigger.) The dish uses butternut squash in its base, and is then enhanced with turmeric, smoked paprika, crispy onions and of course, “cheese”.

Vegan cheese, from what I hear, is an eternally difficult thing to get right – it seems where one aspect of cheese is achieved, such as meltiness, one is sacrificed somewhat. Here there is a slightly missing cheesy tang to be borne in mind. It all has a lovely warm comforting effect though, especially with the accompanying kale. This adds a salty, semi-crisp texture that works excellently in the mix – showing the real culinary skill that married co-owners Michelle O’Mahoney and Davina Pascal are able to bring to this food.

The two other sides, which we opted to share, confirmed Café SoVegan as a proposition that will appeal to vegans and non-vegans alike. Firstly – sweet potato fries. These really can come out with varying degrees of success, a truism that I’ve demonstrated with weary regularity at home. The ones here strike a really good balance of crispness and flavour, and obviously go brilliantly with a pint.

The second was the Cauliflower Nuggets, which I was particularly in favour of ordering, as chicken is the only thing I’ve eaten in nugget form before. These were battered cauliflower pieces with a delicious spicy warmth, light as a feather and without a hint of greasiness – a really worthwhile addition.

Given the paucity of fully-vegan restaurants in the country as a whole, Café SoVegan is a project to be heralded. Vegans with a taste for comfort food will be in raptures, and omnivores like me, if not totally converted, at least walk away knowing what “seitan” means – and why they may well be dining SoVegan again.

Café SoVegan @ The Royal Sovereign pub
64 Northwold Road, E5 8RL
London

July 27, 2016
My Neighbours the Dumplings – restaurant review

My Neighbours the Dumplings’ frontage on Lower Clapton Road

As previous reviews attest, Clapton is now home to several quality Asian eateries. The newest among them is the puzzlingly named My Neighbours the Dumplings, which opened last month on Lower Clapton Road. As a dumpling fanatic, I waited impatiently for the opening, and apparently wasn’t alone in doing so: when we visited midweek, the restaurant was so bustling that a passing resident marvelled that she’d never seen such a busy place locally. It took us a few moments to get through the door as a decent crowd had assembled around the sake bar, seemingly just popping in for a drink.

MNTD has many things to recommend it. The general ambience is outstanding. The interior is thronged in custom-made light boxes, and the music is good, contributing to a celebratory vibe. The service is warm too. And the ingredients are clearly of a high quality, with meat sourced from the Rare Breed Meat Company. This is immediately apparent from the earthiness of the pork and lamb. It was nice to be offered ethically-sourced meat, which is not generally a fixture at regular dim sum parlours.

As dim sum is a brunch food, the food here isn’t strictly traditional. Diners do order from a tick box list, and the dishes are served in baskets, for sharing. The menu is carefully chosen, with classics like siu mai and sticky rice alongside pan-Asian fare such as a cucumber salad spiked with chilli and lemongrass, and a generous smattering of vegetarian options. We tried about eight dishes and although the general quality was high, some were more successful than others. The lamb and coriander potstickers were crispy without greasiness and the turnip cake with Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms was outstanding. The siu mai, however, weren’t firm enough, and the pork in the filling overpowered the prawn rather than hitting a balance. The prawn wontons were priced quite dearly at £5 (over a pound per piece), but were dry, with a thimble-sized portion of sauce.

Far and away the best dish was the whole steamed lemon sole in a coriander butter sauce, the coda to our meal. The fish, sourced from sustainable fishmonger Soleshare, was silky and buttery, with a delicate flavour that needed little adornment. Although the daily fish selection changes, I expect the quality will remain outstanding.

It took us far too long to receive and pay our bill, which came to £60 for two people with a soft drink and one sake cocktail. A shade too pricey for my tastes but I would definitely head there when hit by a dumpling craving – it’s local, ethical and the joyous atmosphere put us in a good mood.

My Neighbours the Dumplings
165 Lower Clapton Road, E5 8EQ
myneighboursthedumplings.com

April 15, 2016
Born to RUN: street artist becomes a political animal

Detail from RUN’s latest piece of street art in Lower Clapton

To be ubiquitous on the streets yet elusive in person are two of the unwritten rules of street art.

And Italian artist RUN ticks both boxes, his trademark hands and interlocking faces adorning walls everywhere from Shoreditch to the backstreets of Lower Clapton – yet he is known only by a pseudonym.

A third rule – to have a socially engaged or political message – is something RUN never used to concern himself with.
“The political statement is implicit in the act of painting on the street,” says the street artist.

But a commission to re-do a painting in Clapton Passage, on the side wall of what is now a veterinary practice, changed things for the artist.

RUN set out to paint some animals or something related to the natural world in the small passageway off Lower Clapton Road where his work has been visible for several years.

After making a start he returned five or six times, adding something new to the artwork each time.
Two days after the recent election, RUN was on his ladder finishing the piece off, when a member of the public seeing the artwork called up to him, shouting: “Ah-ha! It’s a banker! A banker on a lead!”

RUN describes the finished piece as a man with a chain around his neck “looking like a raging animal under anaesthetic and crawling like all the animals of the forest and the savanna.”

Airing political views in a public setting is breaking new ground for RUN, but instead of a feeling of release, the experience has brought with it some unfamiliar anxieties.

“The message is not very hidden. It is pretty clear and obvious. But what is not obvious is the fear I have that the piece will be censored or deleted after someone complains,” RUN says.

“This of course happens all the time and is not a big deal. But after this election I feel all the social places and artistic spaces that are made by people and not by associations or corporate brands will be soon taken away.”

There is no evidence to suggest the new government will crack down on street art. Graffiti removal is, after all, the responsibility of councils rather than central government.

But could a surprise by-product of the election be a flourishing of political art? For street artist RUN the writing – or the paint at least – is on the wall.

June 16, 2015