Torsten slama biography of michael

E:vent—Cyril Lepetit—Untitled Personal Exhibition

Today, I had one of those somewhat rare, inspirational days, which served to regenerate my enthusiasm for art.

My friend Catherine texted me this afternoon to ask if I fancied visiting some galleries in the Bethnal Green area. I was in two minds about going at first, it takes about an hour to get there and I’d already been out once that day and kind of felt like staying in and getting some reading done. But I also felt that I shouldn’t miss an opportunity to see some shows as college work has meant that I’ve been on some kind of hiatus for the past two months as far as visiting galleries goes. So an hour later I was in Bethnal Green, waiting to meet Catherine, and what looked like a grey and chilly day unexpectedly turned sunny and warm.

Catherine was brandishing a map published by Time Out magazine promoting firstthursdays, an initiative to promote East End galleries. The East End of London has always had that certain something which marks what might be an up-and-coming ‘art’ area. Unfortunately, it’s had it for a very long time – when I was on my Fine Art degree in the early ’90’s this was where the smaller galleries were just starting to get a foothold, but the area itself was still very much a down-market neigbourhood, and the galleries tended to stand out like sore thumbs in this environment. But things finally look like they’re happening, to the extent that the area seems to be undergoing an overall regeneration – new appartment blocks and offices are springing up amongst the industrial units and ex-council flats, this perhaps being the more obvious signs of an overall gentrification of the area (for better or worse).

We only had a couple of hours so we concentrated on a small area to the West of Cambridge Heath Road, starting on Old Bethnal Green Road at Hotel, showing a series of large-scale but intricately detailed drawings by Torsten Slama: &#