Why can’t art galleries be a little more alive and have just a touch of the energy you find in the best scuzzy left-field music venues? Why can’t we keep on changing the show? Why does it always have to be so reverentially polite and uninviting? Not saying it all needs changing, I like a  reverentially polite gallery as much as anyone, sometimes I demand silence and private space to consider, contemplate, experience enjoy… but hey, sometimes the space demands a little more attitude and energy. Yesterday the Chelsea art students asked that I remove the untidy posters and clean the window before their show opened… No, the window can’t be cleaned, in is ingrained with decades of beautifully real East London industrial dirt, it won’t come off, we tried and we kind of like that our attempts to remove it failed now. And the posters are there to inform people…  We’re artists, we want people to see our work.

STOP PRESS:  Did rather enjoy some quiet peaceful time with HARM VAN DEN DORPE’s spheres upstairs at the rather grand Wilkinson gallery today. The Wilkinson gallery is a rather large (almost secret) space at the bottom of Vyner Street – a beautiful gallery, a purpose built space marooned behind some uninviting large black doors and a buzzer and CCTV entry system that I’m told can be selective … I wasn’t for one moment suggesting places like Wilkinson should not exist, just that different art spaces need to be treated different ways, different energies and attitudes are needed, we can’t try to be Wilkinson in the same way they could never make their space feel like ours…   Go spend some time in the high-walled bright lights of Wilkinson’s latest show from HARM VAN DEN DORPEL, the perfect environment to spend peaceful time walking around the rather stylistic spheres…