Join our recommended First Thursdays walking route tonight for three captivating free events from 6 to 9 pm in East London. This month’s itinerary will take approximately one hour.
The first stop will be at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix for The Archipelago on Fire by Delaine Le Bas. This marks the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, focusing on the pressing theme of our planet’s decay, a central concern in Le Bas’s recent work. Transforming the gallery into a fantastical landscape, Le Bas invites visitors to reconnect with the awe and mysticism that humanity has historically felt towards the Earth, while starkly highlighting the threats posed by human actions. At the center of the exhibition is a monumental textile piece titled L’Archipel en Feu, resembling a medieval tapestry that commands attention. This vibrant work, adorned with sequins, plastic flowers, and other embellishments, portrays a headless figure engulfed in flames against a backdrop of skulls, accompanied by the recurrent image of a young woman, a motif from earlier works. Surrounding this tapestry is a sea of textile hangings depicting imaginative creatures, creating a three-dimensional maze that encourages visitors to wander among the artworks. The ethereal quality of the organdie material, combined with humor embedded in the hybrid beings, lends a lightheartedness to the otherwise serious themes. The downstairs gallery features smaller-scale paintings, each elegantly framed with found frames. These simpler works stand out for their minimalistic approach, further enhanced by the juxtaposition of the elaborate frames, showcasing Le Bas’s enduring commitment to artistic exploration.
Next, the route continues to Emalin for ret rie vers, a solo exhibition by Stanislava Kovalcikova. This exhibition marks Kovalcikova’s inaugural solo show with the gallery. Her paintings blend mythological imagery with theatrical environments, creating spaces for their narratives to unfold through light, mirrors, and textiles. In ret rie vers, Kovalcikova explores our neurotic attachment to time, presenting a series of found antique Prussian watch dials, historically dismantled from watchtowers. These works combine modernist elements with contemporary decay, capturing the fragmented essence of today’s life. Through this innovative approach, Kovalcikova engages viewers with themes of repression and aspiration, inviting them to contemplate the passage of time and its impact on our existence.
The final destination will be Soft Opening for Fan Fiction by Olivia Erlanger. In this exciting exhibition, Erlanger presents four large-scale ceiling fan sculptures, ingeniously reimagined to resemble butterfly wings. This new body of work builds on Erlanger’s ongoing exploration of “closed worlds,” a concept from architecture theorist Lydia Kallipoliti that critiques climate-controlled environments that obscure the natural world. Erlanger employs butterfly-wing patterns that reflect Batesian mimicry, a survival strategy where non-toxic species imitate toxic ones to evade predators. Through this lens, Fan Fiction humorously addresses sociopolitical adaptation while reinterpreting common household appliances into fantastical sculptures. Erlanger’s transformative practice invites viewers to reconsider the ordinary, creating a whimsical intersection between the mundane and the imaginative.
