The next port of call was the Blackhorse Lane Studios. This is at 114A Blackhorse Lane. Here, the guide map says that 31 artists were exhibiting. That is not strictly speaking true. The building is indeed used by some outstanding talents, but I have to confess that there were a couple of talentless jokers on the premises who should give up now. I shall not embarrass them by reviewing their work, so please forgive me if my comments here are to be restricted to people who actually have some merit to their endeavours. Conversely, if not mentioned, do not take this that I definitely did not like your work - there are several studios I did not have time to visit which looked very inviting indeed. Not being a tourist, I decided not to try to do everything.
Michelle Reader
Reader's studio is downstairs, quite near the entrance. Rather than being the first thing I looked at I should say it was the very last thing I looked at. As at Sainsbury's, I never go round places in the order that organisers intend me to, if indeed, the shows at Blackhorse had a co-ordinating hand. Readers makes sculpture using using recycled materials. She has genuine talent and imagination. In the limited confines of her studio, we could only see photographs of most of her works, which are generally large pieces best suited to public spaces. She did have the wonderful set of angel's wings which features on her website on display, and yes, they do work. Her website is well worth a visit as it gives a taster to the range of work she has undertaken, including some very clever commercial art on a sporting theme.
Despite my being satiated by the time I got to Reader's studio and looking forward to going, it was clear immediately that she has a very distinct creative imagination as well as the talent to actually execute her ideas.
Slobodan Trajković
In a studio upstairs I came across the work of Slobodan Trajković and had the pleasure of the artist himself to discuss it with. I was particularly interested in two of his works. The first of these was a sculpture suspended from the ceiling, comprising three shapes which looked vaguely like musical clefs. They presumably had some form of stiff twisted wire inside them, though they appeared flexible and fluid. Each had been coated with some kind of material: white chicken feathers and glass, wool and mirrors, and a pink bio-resin (what used to be called boatbuilders' fiber-glass), which, though hardened, has a slight tackiness to the touch. These textured forms, twisted almost into clefs, are suggested by Trajković to be a metaphor for circling forms, for interior movement, for musical notes and for a 'path we walk'. He was concerned with 'spiritual maps about how we move' when he made the work. He is interested generally in how people feel about forms and textures.
I was also taken with a piece he produced called 'Wailing Wall'. The piece he had on display was a second, unfinished version, as the first was higher, had a higher table as a plinth and included a suspended long brass crumhorn, twisted, somewhat redolently of the clef wires in the other work. Although entitled Wailing Wall, echoes of the wall of Jericho and the shofar are also intentional.
At Blackhorse Studios, the unfinished work at this stage comprised moulded pieces of plaster, piled with sheets of glass as if tiles and bricks to form a wall. The white shaped forms which make up the wall do look somewhat like bones piled in an ossuary. Trajković is exploring some problems which he considers are deeply incorporated in the Western psyche.
Julie Major
Major's work is executed with great technical accomplishment, as one should expect from a product of the Royal Academy of Arts. The geometrical spiked urchin-like forms (some quite large, as in the case of Halo 1, made of aluminium and resin), remind me of hearts, corals, shells, teeth and coils. It is beautiful work, and as an occasional collector of beachcombed objects, I appreciate the man-made imitations, even if I am not sure what the artist means by them.
Rosemarie McGoldrick
Rosemary McGoldrick has one of the bigger spaces at Blackhorse Studios and not as much subtle natural light as her colleagues. I did wonder if this had any influence on her decision to produce so many stark black sillouhetted works. These are often on a theme of birds. It seems though that she has done work with the Forestry Commission inspired by Red Kites in the Chilterns.
I particularly liked a slightly different piece called "What Katie Did After" comprising 'old cages and mute loudspeakers', which for some reason I am still not sure about, amused me.
Lesley Dalton
When I entered Lesley Dalton's studio and took in her glaze-like oil and mixed media paintings, ceramics and textured sculpures I assumed she was a ceramic artist who had taken these techniques on into her other works. She was not present on Saturday, unfortunately, but her friend who was studio sitting told me he thought the journey had been in the other direction, with the ceramics coming later. This surprised me.
I particularly liked her small wall-mounted sculptures, which were carved from moulded plaster bricks, sculpted into curved wave-like forms, which have been partially finely textured (one could almost say pebble-dashed). They conveyed something of the coast to me.
Mike Thorn
Mike Thorn is among of the most representational of the artists at Blackhorse Studios. He is an extremely accomplished portrait painter in a way so few seem to be these days. Some of his works, which tend to be of very powerful 'hyper' masculine torsos, are genuinely shocking. He also has a different side in his sculptural and more commercial works.
Lucille Montague
It was a particular treat for me to find the studio of Lucille Montague, as I have seen some her paintings and pastels before and am a great admirer of her witty and often poignant works. I dare anyone to look upon "The End of the Dance", a depiction of a woman in a ball gown with a paper hat on her head and not be moved.
Neil Irons
I laughed aloud at the ASBO Delft which Neil Irons had exhibited, a wonderful series of blue and white tiles with street scenes from a public space near you. His contemporary political themes are more subtly conveyed than the title of these works might suggest, especially in his large paintings which were on display but unfortunately not visible on his website. The landscape of a vandalised tree trunk, abandoned police crime scene tape and shallow grave in Epping Forest, is a chilling modern masterpiece.