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Debut Show of Odd Seeds
19-21 May 2023 at Greatorex Street
A narrative through the amalgamation of the odd.
11 artists from different specialisms and different backgrounds, come together forming the Odd Seeds.
Commencing from a seed, it is not the fruit or the flower, it is the process of sprouting, the germination that reveals.
Curated by Lâl Yılmaz, scatterings of moments and fragments of processes are presented whereby captured artefacts are relics of a thought, or a time not experienced by the viewer. Dispersed seeds physically connect the emotionally distant, drawing from personal experience and innate motions of growth and repair.
The portrayal of vulnerable states become prominent through deconstruction of preconceived ideas. Barriers are dissolved and remaining matter becomes a vessel of documenting traces of processes, states, growth. The body as a motif is distinguished as separate from the soul but also inherently inhabits the same space, bringing duality into question.
Nature and artifice co-exist, informed by bodily connection to forms of seedlings and the detritus of contemporary life. Ruins of change sprout threads, stitching together versions of events and unrelated narratives from each artist.
Words by Lâl Yılmaz and Jack Oulton
More photos >
Curated by Lâl Yılmaz assisted by Huw Dickinson
Photos by Jacob Sirkin
Words on the Show
“Review: 'Odd Seeds' at Greatorex Street” written by Maja Nieves
Entering a gallery space amid the frenzy, contrasts and rapid gentrification that makes London’s East End is bizarre. Pushing open the only double-glazed glass door on the street into a brightly-lit square with sterile, freshly-painted walls rarely feels natural.
In line with its very title, the group show Odd Seeds, embraced this otherworldliness by prolonging and exaggerating this liminal transformation from the everyday to the curated. On a side street just off bustling Brick Lane, my steps were painfully loud - threatening to put out the flickering tea candles uncannily illuminating the industrial corridor that leads to artist-run studio and project space Greatorex Street.
Such a sense of precarity and self-awareness was carried on in Odd Seed's careful curation of 11 artists working across a variety of mediums. Currently still studying for her BA at Central Saint Martins, Lâl Yilmaz selected fellow students across the University of the Arts London for what marks her curatorial debut. Assisted by London/Oxfordshire-based creative Huw Dickinson, the result combined existing and commissioned works on the themes of nature and artifice, states of transience and the vulnerability of self – odd seeds growing in a curated space of connection and community.
Evoking the notion of commonality, the loose and playful placement allowed my eye to wander, making organic connections with every new turn around the room. Initially drawn by Kentaro Okumura's copper oil canvases in the space's back corner, their soft brushstrokes – evoking fluidity and vulnerability – naturally guided me to Yilmaz' warm-toned oil abstraction 'Incubating an Enigma' to the right of it. Hung just opposite, 'Germinating Photography. Casita Bonita v.ii' – one of the most striking works of the show – takes the shape of 77 film strips documenting the gradual decay of plants, seeds and seawater. Trapped inside the photographic medium, the biological remnants' fleeting colours delicately escape outside the film's frames.
Photography and moving image are taken up continuously across the room. Whilst Thea Levine's photographic 'Body' series is an intimate reflection of subjects' vulnerability, femininity and imperfections; Roy Carmona explores queerness and religious abjection through video. Continuously screened in a separate room – resembling a confessional – at the back of the gallery, 'Bakala Angels' acts as a queered re-enactment of Catholic rituals through an anonymised figure's distressing reliving of the Stations of the Cross.
At the gallery's centre, 'Cyclical time-keeper' by Rosette Sablerolles consists of an elevated metal plate showcasing a circular, almost ritualistic assembly of glass wax sculptures based on objects found by the river Thames. Approaching the theme of transcendence through an ecological lens, Sablerolle's artistic practice extends beyond the sculpture to a video work documenting the melting of the objects' ice-y counterparts. With the screen placed at the back of the room, the dripping sounds are neatly employed as an ambient background for the whole exhibition.
Considering the gallery's dimensional constraints, the absence of wall labels helps create an illusion of space adding to the organic and unrestrained conceptual principles behind Odd Seeds. In breaking from the traditional ways of curatorial guidance, the curation allows for the works' interaction with each other and, in doing so, successfully evokes a more democratic notion of exhibition-making. As the press release puts it: "Commencing from a seed, it is not the fruit or the flower, it is the process of sprouting, the germination that reveals".
However, for a concept that crucially relies on the activation of artists' individual works through the collective, offering relatively little information and guidance is a risky choice. Indeed, the selected works' subtle conceptual hints connecting the exhibition as a whole required concentrated engagement and artists' innovative manipulation of traditional media were only seen at second glance. Removing curatorial guidance is a balancing act that can engender but, if pushed too far, also inhibit the viewer to make connections. With time at hand and the capacity to fully engage in the show, Yilmaz' relaxed concept allows for a most engaging, innovative and well-designed experience. However, for the uninformed viewer, without the catalogue at hand, such freedoms perhaps ask for too much – risking to take away from the full appreciation of the show's ingenious works.
All in all, Odd Seeds is an impressive, multi-layered study of a zeitgeist, the strange and precarious emotional archives of a generation of creatives that – announced by the show's uncanny and exceptionally odd entrance – reverberated in my mind when exiting through the very same corridor. After a successful debut in the oddities and disparities of the East End, Yilmaz intends to grow the concept into further 'amalgamations of the odd' - across London and beyond.