We Cannot Say What We Cannot Think

We Cannot Say What We Cannot Think

14 August, 2009
by: Joe Harrod

To Camden yesterday evening for the opening of a pop-up gallery opposite the Stables Market and a few doors down from Proud, for a show featuring three artists. Camden is lovely in the sunshine, and a visit is vastly improved by walking in from Chalk Farm, creating a first impression of space and vibrancy, vs the teenage goth-lite tourist clutter around Camden Town tube.

This particular pop-up gallery is a ground floor and basement, with an intriguing cellar room under the road and a wide pavement outside, an important feature for art scene minglers and free drink liggers. Inside, we find the works of three young London-based artists in a show entitled We Cannot Say What We Cannot Think.

Sinta Tantra is perhaps the most high-profile: a Balinese mural and installation specialist who has built a number of site-specific projects around the city. Her work for this show is much more portable, but equally eye-catching: a series of perspex eggs whose smooth ovoids are criss-crossed with angular, neon paint lines and the occasional stenciled tree or recognisable shape. They look brilliant, and they're market savvy too: like uncharacteristically beautiful frozen slides from the late noughties nu rave aesthetic. Perhaps the highlight of the show is the dank cellar under Chalk Farm Road where the largest of these ovoids glints and glimmers on the floor. Personally, I'd put it on a wall.

Jessica Holmes produces works of great beauty and delicacy. For some years she worked on newspaper, a very unstable material, and her last two shows have seen her move to a kind of crepe that literally flutters in the breeze. The series exhibited here, The Last Emperor, features felled stags and deers at the moment of collapse in fields of flowers or mushrooms. The contrast between unadorned grey crepe, stunningly detailed paintwork, a flyaway canvas and heavy subject matter is entirely pleasing. Much like her rampant bulls on financial pages, these are works you want to take home.

Sam Williams is an RCA grad and sculptor who came up with the show's title, We Cannot Say What We Cannot Think, as a by-product of his extensive reading of Wittgenstein. His hammered together quasi-bronze age boxes are a re-imagining of ancient techniques and also the result of three days camped in the gallery: they're too big to have been made anywhere else. All very serious, no doubt, but slightly bemusing.

Upstairs again it emerges that there's even a shop selling affordable products by the artists: stenciled vinyl bags, lino prints and postcard paintings. It's time to get going before a rash purchase comes on, but this show is well worth your time: an intriguing and beautiful collaboration in a bright new space.

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Joe Harrod