Poetry of place

Is London a model city or a sink of iniquity? Defining things in terms of extremes is of course a typical dialectical strategy intended to stimulate discussion. London is a melting-pot, a vast stew of energies and lassitudes, of good and evil. In this exhibition we are offered a taste of how artists respond to its present-day reality: ten contemporary painters and one sculptor interpret London as she lives and breathes. Subtitled ‘A Provocative Exhibition’, this display has been put together by Mireille Galinou of the London Arts Café. It’s worth a visit, not because it will resolve any debate about the state of the capital, but because it features some rather good painting and serves to draw attention to one of the city’s all-but-invisible treasures — the Guildhall Art Gallery.

Once you’ve passed the security guards and had your luggage X-rayed (getting into this museum is like boarding a plane), proceed downstairs. The exhibition is prefaced by a corridor introduction of text and a couple of paintings, which afford a précis of its theme. Both paintings depict Smithfield Market, but in very different ways. On one side is Sharon Beavan’s intense, almost mediaeval vision of a pilgrimage of porters carrying animal carcases on barrows to the great meat market, which looms across the painting like a cathedral. Red with the spilt blood of beasts, the picture is punctuated by the long blue smocks of the porters. To a vegetarian, the arch of Smithfield probably gapes like the mouth of Hell; certainly, Beavan’s painting is unmistakably corporeal. Ben Johnson’s painting, on the other hand, is ethereal, depicting the girders supporting the roof of the market’s arcade. It looks even more like a cathedral than Beavan’s painting: a hymn to harmony and organised structure, a leaping vault which is a small marvel of engineering.