Aesthetically Pleasing
Cult East London gallery/shop M.Goldstein’s latest Group Show opens this Friday 1st March at 67 Hackney Road. Once again, there is an exciting mix of artists, which pays no mind to the strictures of the art world. Wylde sent Candy West to ask curator Pippa Brooks about her choices…
Wylde: John Maybury is primarily known for being a film-maker (Love Is The Devil, his Francis Bacon biopic is one of our favourites!) and video director. How did showing his paintings come about?
Pippa Brooks: What a lot of people don’t know about John Maybury is that he studied film and painting at art school. He started painting his Lost Boys in acrylic paint on top of the pages of porn magazines in the late Seventies. His work in photography and film is often about making layers and he works on these magazine images in the same way, covering up the original, yet revealing an intimate response to them. It’s a particular honour to show Maybury, as I’ve been such a fan of his work since I was an art student. You used to be able to rent a video room in the ICA, pick films from their library, carry the hulking great tapes to your personal TV and sit there with headphones on, as I did, watching John’s shorts, which starred everyone I’d read about in i-D magazine.
Instagram: @johnfmaybury
Princess Julia x Noki sounds like an exciting collaboration… is it art or fashion?
That’s up to the individual to decide! Both artists have so many strands to their creativity and I love this! Noki has ‘customised’ Princess Julia’s oil on canvas celebrity portraits of Rihanna, Celine Dion, Grace Jones and Madonna. He contributes eyes and smiles, which he cut from a Back Street Boys tour T-shirt, and then finished them with a border made from his graffiti DD print. A nod to Dadaism, giving a twisted narrative layer and maybe a comment on celebrity?
Instagram: @hrhprincessjulia @nokiofficial
Louise Gray is also more connected to the fashion world in most people’s minds, this is the second time you have shown her word/image works, isn’t it?
Yes, I love people who refuse to be categorised, who are creative on their own terms. Like Julia, Louise brings this prolific generosity of ideas and possibility to everything she touches. I have so much respect for the way Louise has forged her own agenda away from the fashion schedule. She has created a special, limited poster called Leg It for the show. It’s BIG and designed to be blue-tacked onto the wall, in proper poster fashion!
Instagram: @louisegray_
Tell me about Shiori Takahashi’s head pieces?
I first met Shiori on a Theo Adams Company project and have worked with her and watched her work many times over the years. I love watching her in the mirror, in the zone. She’s seriously inventive and experimental, fearless even, in her manipulation of real hair, wigs and sculptural additions which take ‘looks’ somewhere magical. I’ve watched her weave discarded ring-pulls into hair, creating such beauty from trash; my favourite thing. These sculptural head-pieces are site-specific, using found rubbish to create head props which are also beautiful objects to enjoy as art works in their own right.
Instagram: @shioritakahashi
Millree Hughes is a Brooklyn-based digital artist, who is showing drawings; how did this come about?
Nathaniel, who co-runs M.Goldstein, worked with Millree in Japan and the USA in his other life as a set designer. So I’ve followed Millree’s work via their relationship. He is known for working digitally, but he also makes these drawings which are about making art digitally. They are drawn with a Sharpie, and layered, from images found online, on Instagram, irrespective of the source. They might be comics, illustration, advertising or art, all are given equal consideration.
Instagram: @millreehughes.artist
Racheal Robb’s Skull reminds me of the paintings of Caravaggio…
Her use of chiaroscuro is certainly reminiscent of the memento mori paintings, particularly of the Renaissance era. I love its darkness. The objects chosen have different associations for each viewer; there is a sense of story, and of pause, which is a gorgeous moment in the show.
Instagram: @rachael_robb
William Selden’s painting Composition In Yellow is fire!
It’s so beautiful isn’t it, glows almost? William has a highly developed sense of colour and light, being a photographer, and he paints digitally, a really interesting evolution which has grown out of taking pictures.
Instagram: @williamselden
Liza Keane is the youngest artist in the show, how did you come across her work?
We both walked for Art School and when I saw her illustrations on Instagram I was so impressed with the world she has created with her clothing, as well as her illustrations which embody this character she will send down the runway…so much tension relating to eroticism, sainthood, restraint, temptation and control. There’s a whole dramatic story which feels very true and well thought out. She’s definitely one to watch!!!!
Instagram: @ihatelizakeane
GROUP SHOW runs from 1-14 March
The gallery is open 12PM-6PM (closed Mondays)
Address: 67 Hackney Road, London E2 8ET, UK
Tel: 07870 696994
Enquiries: pippa@mgoldstein.co.uk