Review of Print Club Exhibition, Brick Lane (7th April)

To find my online copy on http://www.freedomspark.co.uk/, click here

Last night, the Print Shop in the East Gallery on Bricklane held an exhibition featuring artist Marina de Stacpoole and print company Rarekind London. After grabbing a chilled San Miguel, I wandered through Stacpoole’s work in the main room. Her work is a mixture of landscapes created by digital prints with enamel paint applied to the top surface which hardens the overall image. The prints appear as bright, warm and glossy but the message from the artist is within these surface objects which seem like temporary figures passing through the landscape. As art expert, Caroline Hick, noted, Stacpoole refers to our popular culture and our current political state in the UK such as “cuts, tax-dodging, arms-dealing and other corporate shenanigans”, through objects such as soldiers, sign posts and pictures of TV shows.

In the basement, Rarekind London showed a variety of work from 11 artists based around print, illustrations and graffiti work. The theme was ‘London’ throughout and this generated a proud and bold vision of the city. Prints were also littered with cultural references, the first being a literary quote “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life” taken from the 18^th century English author, Samuel Johnson. Another print by Tim Godwin symbolised the power of words within an tree image using scattered speech marks and branches intertwined with quotes by famous male figures such Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, Spike Milligan and Arthur Morrison. The quote that stood out was written by George Orwell, “As I write highly civilised human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me” – this is taken from the introductory sentence of Orwell’s essay written in 1941 called “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius” spoken in regards to WWII. The prints from artists exhibiting through Rarekind London were current and insightful with modern images and a positive outlook – and this was much needed relief following Stacpoole’s harsh and intense work. It also represented the pride of artists working in London and how reflective they are on what has already been created whether it from British literature, art, music or culture.

For more information on artists from Rarekind London, go to http://rarekindlondon.com/cat/agency/ but if you’d like to see the prints photographed here, contact David@rarekindlondon.com.