Transition Gallery

The sign outside the gallery

Transition Gallery is a contemporary art project space in Hackney, East London. It is run by artists Cathy Lomax, Alli Sharma and Alex Michon. Transition Editions, the gallery's publishing arm, produces publications to accompany shows as well as two bi-annual magazines, Arty and Garageland.

History

Transition Gallery was founded in October 2002 in a converted garage close to Victoria Park, Hackney, London, and is run by artists Cathy Lomax and Alex Michon to show work by established and new contemporary artists.[1]

Show titles have included Golden Fluffer, The English Museum, The Painting Room, Awopbopaloobop, Prozac and Private Views (the first Stella Vine solo show), Goth Moth and Girl on Girl. There is often a provocative polemic accompanying the shows. The Girl on Girl (January 2004) text stated:

Girl on Girl examines a new sensibility in art. Made by girls and about girls it makes a virtue of discontent, sexual disruptiveness and bad manners. This work reclaims the girly and the slutty not in a riot girl, feminist or ‘woman in art’ way but with a cultural celebration, that has both the shy and the brash as equal role models. Think PJ Harvey, Frida Kahlo, The Slits, Karen Kilimnik, Artemisia Gentileschi, Patti Smith, Meg White, think sense of conviction and to hell with the consequences.

Transition Gallery received press attention in February 2004 when a painting exhibited by then-obscure artist Stella Vine was bought for by Charles Saatchi and given international media coverage for its controversial depiction of Diana, Princess of Wales. It was titled Hi Paul Can You Come Over and showed the Princess with heavy eyes and blood dripping from her lips.

In March 2004, Liz Neal's Archway council flat studio was recreated as an installation inside the gallery for a show called The Lair of the Lotus Eater.[2] Her work was exhibited in the Saatchi Gallery's New Blood show in the same year.[2]

In 2005, Evening Standard critics, Nick Hackworth and Brian Sewell, visited the gallery. Hackworth wrote: It looks like a small garage workshop, but instead of Star Motors the legend reads: "You don't have to be blonde to be an artist, but it helps." Inside, the walls are papered with magazine pages, photographs and postcards on the theme of quintessential Englishness; among them are paintings by Lomax and Michon. There is a subversive innocence about the installation.[3]

In 2006, the gallery moved slightly further west to Regent Studios, which is also home to the MOT gallery, and close to the gallery hotspot of Vyner Street. Other galleries in the area are Vilma Gold and IMT.

In the summer of 2007 Transition organised the bank holiday weekend art festival O Dreamland on the Kent coast with the Folkestone-based Club Shepway. Participating artists included Lucy Harrison, Delaine Le Bas and Russell Herron. The second Transition off-site event was That's Entertainment which was part of the 2008 Whitstable Biennale.

Artists exhibited include

Delaine Le Bas, Tom Hunter, Carlos Noronha Feio, Rose Wylie, Hew Locke, Zoe Mendelson, Nadia Hebson, Cathie Pilkington and Jessica Voorsanger.

Notes and references

  1. ↑ "Transition Gallery", NYArts. Retrieved 28 January 2009.
  2. 1 2 Hepzibah, Anderson. "Busy lizzie", Evening Standard, p. 30, 18 March 2004.
  3. ↑ Hackworth, Nick. "Brian's awfully big adventure in the East End", Evening Standard, p. 40, 23 September 2005.

External links

Coordinates: 51°32′08″N 0°03′40″W / 51.5355°N 0.0611°W / 51.5355; -0.0611

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