curated by Finlay TaylorWeekend Paradise presents four artists primarily working with video and photography. The show views the ‘natural world’ as a place perceived for leisure with phenomenon that is happening in the background and now bought to our attention. With the exhibits held within the urban space of E1 a distance is emphasised to the stuff of the ‘natural world’ that we encounter everyday ,unwittingly or not .Judith Goddard’s double screened video work shows a spider poised within its web, floating in a breeze rising and descending gracefully awaiting a victim. On the opposing screen a police search helicopter hovers at night over London, creating a tension between the unseen people in the flying machine and offering a mimicry with the arachnid.Sian Bonnell’s photographs presented here include ‘Glass hills,’ a black and white image of glass jelly moulds in a grassy landscape. They sit and gleam awkwardly with a UFO like presence or some upturned udder sculptures. Despite this humourous appearance these food containers feel edgy and alien in the space and far from the production of ‘natural goodness’.Jem Southam has for the last two years been documenting the changes in his garden from the same view point. The resulting photographic images read as a set of subtle events but on closer inspection the politics of neighbour interaction and fence building become apparent, aswell as the movement of garden gnomes and the ramble of plants and seasonal change.David Adkins video piece ‘Kemmelberg’ records an eight minute cycle journey to the summit of the Kemmelberg, the hill that overlooks Ypres. The journey begins in a tranquil Dutch landscape and becomes more agitated as it approaches the war memorial at the summit. It takes place at the pivotal point along the route of the Ghent-Wevelgem cycle race passing chalk written road markings hailing cycle racers in this peopleless expanse that was once a trench warfare no-mans-land.

the work of Sian Bonnell and Jem Southam appears courtesy of Hirschl Contemporary Art