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Review May 24 2009 « | »
Jenny Holzer at Between Bridges and Henry Hudson at Trolley Gallery Thursday night saw the opening of two new shows either side of Brick Lane showcasing two very different talents:......

India Phillips

Thursday night saw the opening of two new shows either side of Brick Lane showcasing two very different talents: an exhibition of the established conceptual artist Jenny Holzer's early work at Between Bridges, and a new show from the promising painter Henry Hudson at the Trolley Gallery.

Between Bridges is a small space on the corner of Cambridge Heath Road, its whitewashed walls going some way to creating a bit of a sense of space - but the little space the gallery has is made the most of as a back-drop to Holzer's stark text-art. The show exhibits eight posters from her first series of works entitled 'Truisms' from '77-'79, and four posters from 'Inflamatory Essays' of '79-'82. As a pioneer of text as art and large-scale projection Holzer is an important figure, and her provocative and often funny statements must have achieved their desired shock-factor when they were first projected on the side of Times Square and posted up in New York telephone boxes.

Many of the issues surrounding gender, liberalism and social mores addressed in her posters are still prompting the new generation of artists emerging in London now, so this show is an interesting historic touchstone in reference to more current art. However, out of there intended habitat of the street corner, where her posters would have been taken for publicity fliers, her works do lose something of their poetry.

Despite this it is really refreshing to see a small selection of works by an important and established artist on show with free admission in an area populated by young artists - it would be great to see more of this and break the tyranny of Tate Modern a bit!

From the stark textual minimalism of Holzer at Between Bridges I was transported into the 18th Century by Henry Hudson's new solo show at Trolley Gallery on Redchurch Street. The space is set up perfectly for the artist's Hogarthian vignettes in plasticine and coloured pencil: dark interior, red material draping the walls - all very Gin Alley. These new canvases are painted using the artist's trademark melted plasticine, creating riotous technicolour snapshots of Hogarth's London underbelly.

Hudson's observations blur the lines between the hedonism of today's London with the legendary debauchery depicted in 'Rake's Progress' - in one work a character is offered a cigarette butt, in another an energy saving bulb glows in the place of an oil lamp. There are also some beautiful coloured-pencil drawings of society figures and chalk studies on display that really highlight the artist's skill as a draughtsman.

Hudson's reputation as an artist has really been gathering pace since his breakthrough show 'The Beautiful and the Damned' at Hiscox Art Projects, and he is confirmed as an innovator in his use of materials and one to keep watching for sure. Like Hogarth, Hudson's obsession is with England, Englishness and all the dregs of our society - but he depicts it with warmth and a real lack of judgement, and within Trolley's red walls travelling back to the time of the Rake and the Harlot doesn't seem so far-fetched.

Jenny Holzer at Between Bridges, 223 Cambridge Heath Road, 22 May to 5 July - the Between Bridges site is {here}.

Henry Hudson 'Knappin' at Trolley Gallery, 73a Redchurch Street, 21 May to 25th July - Trolley Gallery's {site} is under development, but is linked for future use.

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