M Goldstein's "Group Show"

Report by Candy West

Don't miss M.Goldstein's winter group show which runs until 14th December on Hackney Road. Somehow, the five artists all have space to call their own in this tiny gallery.

Kingsley Ifill and Nicholas Abrahams' work face each other in the front section of the gallery. Abrahams wall has a feeling of installation with a beautifully melancholy film made with folk legend Shirley Collins on loop, objects and giclée prints surrounding the screen serve as a memento mori and lead us to the polar bears...literally a wall of collected antique photographs, all of which feature sad, happy, angry and even fighting polar bears. The clutter of Abrahams' wall is in complementary contrast to Ifill's row of arresting, untitled works, a previously unseen portfolio of images screen printed onto Esso mechanics paper, framed in stark white on the only white wall of the gallery.

Further back in the pink salon, Andy Bradin and Benjamin Kirchhoff Bradin's erotically charged collages face Julia Fodor aka Princess Julia's men in make-up, rendered in acrylic on canvas. We see double as these pieces are reflected in a huge mirror which takes up the back wall, an appropriate device given the subject matter of both the artists.

All the works are for sale, starting at £150 for an Abrahams signed giclée print in a limited edition of 10, produced exclusively for the show. They have produced two greetings cards too, one featuring Princess Julia's Eddie painting and the other, one of Abrahams' unsettling polar bears, only available at M.Goldstein.

M. GOLDSTEIN GALLERY: 67 Hackney Rd, Bethnal Green, London E2 8ET

Phone: 07905 325215