Arriving at the end of this week at East London’s M. Goldstein gallery comes a new group show celebrating the work of nine artists. Set amongst the trove of antiques and vintage paintings that are the raison d’être of M. Goldstein, the exhibition reflects the varied taste of Pippa Brooks, the former owner of cult Soho boutique Shop who now co-run’s the premises.

“As always, I have chosen the artists that excite me,” Brooks tells us. “I like that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see their work alongside one another. They all have a really strong voice and M.Goldstein is a small gallery. It is going to be very loud! I’m so excited for the hang!”

From Kingsley Ifill‘s silk screens to Princess Julia’s spontaneous life-drawing sketches and Louise Gray‘s pen-to-paper emotions, the show’s strength is the disparate nature of each artists practice. 

Here, each artist gives us an insight into their particular work featured in the exhibition – except Kingsley Ifill, who lets his work speaks for itself. 

Augenblick Press ‘The Girls 1964’ (Hand printed photographic print from found negative)
“We will be showing photographic prints from found 35mm negatives of three teenagers, taken by their father, an amateur photographer, in 1964, somewhere in north west London. These images were found – along with many others – documenting his family life, in a shoe box at a west London car boot sale.”

(We will also be launching Augenblick vol.1, a publication conceived by Barry Seven and Sam Kilcoyne. Augenblick is a journal dedicated to the art of the anonymous photograph/the anonymous photographer. An ‘Augenblick’ translates from German to ‘eye moment’ or ‘eye glance’, the camera indelibly marking on film a moment in time.)”

Luella Bartley ‘Untitled Drawing’ (detail) (pencil & ink on paper)

“A series of portraits and self portraits exploring the insecurities, realities and beauty of the female body.”

James Dearlove ‘Night Swimmers 1’ (mixed media on canvas)

“A swimming pool at night emits a beautiful turquoise light that reminds me of a TV or mobile phone screen in the dark. And figuration emerging from an electric blue field seemed perfect for representing in paint. A painting can often be a portal into another dimension (like the pool or screen flickering in the dark), so I also wanted to capture a sense of that in these paintings, of them almost being esoteric objects in themselves.”

Louise Gray ‘So Many Heavens’ (mixed media on paper)

“The words and image works I do are really around my main urges of expression that tie into all my umbrella roles as a woman, designer, feminist, tutor, sister, provocateur, catalyst. You are what you think. I like to make people think in whatever means possible. It’s really interesting to me to be able to show what I do online in a gallery. We live deep in the times where we know what everything looks like through a screen, but to make this work available and as pieces, it’s cool for me to make them into items. I love that Pippa has curated a super intriguing mixture of artists for this, too.”

Kingsley Ifill ‘Meathead’ (silk screen on canvas)

Julia Fodor (Princess Julia) ‘Looking For A Room East If Anyone Knows Of Any xxx Harry’ (2017) (Oil, gouache & acrylic on canvas)

“I’ve been doing life drawing classes with artists Simon Nicholas Gray and James Davison. SketchSesh, it’s like a concept session. People, paints, paper. I’m drawn to people that take pleasure in their appearance, Harry Freegard is one character who is pursuing a creative career in perhaps fashion, perhaps art and sat for us one evening. The models bring the narrative. Much like a photograph is a snapshot of a moment in time, a quick sketch or study is a glimpse of mere minutes recorded. Behind the picture some thought and preparation may go into the composition, the end result is spontaneous and honest.

Andrew Logan ‘Heaven – Crg Chebi Yasmina Morroco’ (1990) (watercolour on paper)

“The watercolours I started when I started travelling. They replaced the glass work while I was away. They’re a documentation of my travels. Creating and making is something that I do every day. I’m self-taught with watercolours and discovering them was like finding a whole new world. The two influences on my watercolours are Zandra Rhodes and my friend, painter Kevin Whitney, particularly Kevin’s edict: “It’s not what you put down on the paper but what you leave out.”

Alice Mendelowitz ‘heads #2’ (oil and acrylic on canvas)
“I’m interested in our itinerant lives and how bodies take pleasure being wherever they are. In my work I explore the moments between leisurely resting and restlessness. The body could be lizard like, lying there, soaking up the summer heat, but the mind is somewhere other; thinking about the deadline or what to make for dinner.”

Hormazd Narielwalla ‘The Mesopotamian Maze No.1’ (lithograph on paper)
“This pair of lithographs draw together diverse cultural influences to celebrate the body and consider its presentation across the history of art, building on cubism via an ancient terracotta figure in the British Museum collections. The voluptuous forms of this prehistoric fertility goddess are a powerful antecedent for the abstract patterns that were the template for 20th C femininity.”