Reflections in Time and Place

The Schwartz Gallery is in my good books at the moment as it has been doing some great shows. The one I liked most was Wonder Island, a location-based storytelling adventure of an exhibition in which artists were invited to re-imagine Hackney Hick as a Utopian oasis within a scary environment. No, I didn’t mean to write that the other way around. I’ve already blogged about how good this show was shaping up to be and it seems to have been popular with everyone else too; so much so that they’ve extended the programme - adding 9th to 25th of January to the original late 2008 exhibition dates.

This place looks-wise is very grey and warehouse-y on the inside, all multicoloured floor-to-ceiling beams and eerie dark shadows. Perfect for the atmospheric staging of video installations, which incidentally is a specialism of theirs, along with sculpture. They also do other fine art disciplines, but I didn’t see any paintings there at the time.

They’re known for very lively, well-populated preview events and is one of the few galleries I know that are open on a Sunday. I know I keep going on about this, but to me Monday-Friday is work time, Saturday is for ‘life admin’ and errands and Sunday is the only day that we Londoners usually have spare for ambling around, discovering new galleries (they’re weekenders, so they only do Fri/Sat/Sun as a rule. I’m not sure if they do appointment bookings unless you’re planning to buy).

They have a somewhat deceptive postcode, which may lead you to believe they’re in Homerton; this is not the case. They’re a bit further out in “The Wick”, right behind the Overground station might I add, making it easy for anyone along the central line to pop over to.

Schwartz Gallery returns with the second installment of Flux – transgressions in time and place, its very successful opening show, in a very exciting and larger space directly next to the space where the first show was held. The space for the first show has since been partitioned into live-work studios.

Shift - reflections in time and place uses this migration and reconstitution of spatial relationships to extend the ideas worked through in the first show. Imminent change and endings are supplanted with reflections,echoes and new beginnings. Physical and imagined places, temporal divisions, traces and memories are again traversed and interpreted through contemporary fine art practice. This second installment brings together five artists from the first show with six new artists creating a further layer and dialogue between what has already taken place and what is now being created

Artists: Simon Atkinson, Gabriel Birch, Panayiotis Delilabros, Ismail Erbil, Sumer Erek, Kit Merritt, Patrick Michalopoulos, Samantha Mogelonsky, Paula Naughton and Mary Yacoob.



Opening night performance: 'Superman’ by Pia, 9pm.
'Wizard of Oz’ puppet show by Soledad Zarate Saturday 9 August 4pm.
Graffiti by Onit Design - Hackney Wick Graffiti Tour Saturday & Sunday
9/10 August 12-5pm.

Curated by Patrick Michalopoulos



Opening in conjunction with the first Hackney Wicked Arts Festival.