©Frankie McAllister

The Central London group held its first meeting of 2025 in a new venue, Lumen, in Tavistock
Place. Twenty-two people attended, 14 of whom presented work; the theme was ‘Doors and
Windows’.

Mirela’s emphasis was upon windows, with examples from diverse locations including
Bosnia, Copenhagen, Dublin, Barbados and Portugal; the latter featured window frames with
decayed frames and nets.

 

Alec displayed a selection of phone images from an ongoing project on seasonal lights in
Edinburgh. These included the Scottish National Gallery, the Scott Monument, fairground
rides and stage show performers including a burlesque performance based on Shrek.

 

Austin presented a personal project which also met the theme. The subject was upturned
fishing boats on the beach at Holy Island (Lindisfarne); these have been repurposed as
equipment sheds in various states of disrepair or refurbishment, and had been photographed
along with the island’s landmarks.

 

Frankie showed a range of windows (and one door) in complementary pairs, capturing
shapes, reflections and interiors including dolls and a cutout corgi. There was also a pair of
stone arched windows in Greece which had been filled in with rocks leaving only their
outlines.

 

Edey’s presentation consisted entirely of windows, first at the Pitzhanger Gallery in West
London. These were followed by increasingly abstract captures of condensation and
reflected light in windows at Woolwich Arsenal and around London’s Soho and Chinatown
districts.

 

Eva presented a group of colour prints, beginning with a series taken while watching people
and light in the foyer of Tate Modern. Her other images were taken in Sicily and Brighton,
along with a very well-received close-up of an elegant red glove.

Hady took us on a long-haul tour of unusual doors and windows, commencing in Shoreditch
with door numbers including a “half” and progressing to corrugated small business premises
in Johannesburg and another door in the same city with carved representations of Mecca
and of prayer mats. Other doors and windows were located in Istanbul and Alexandria,
including Hady’s old apartment and high school.

 

Jim presented nine images from eight different countries, and spanning three decades. His
subjects included Torridon (Scotland), Australia, Canada, the Canary Islands, Madeira,
mainland Portugal and India. His subjects included buildings finished in clapperboard and
corrugated iron, painted doors, a passenger on an Indian train and a human art installation
behind plate glass.

 

Rashida took us to 1970s South Africa with a view of segregated service windows, followed
by racially-defined separate entrance doors at the Apartheid Museum. Her other images
included South African shops within shacks, Halloween in Toronto and window ornaments
beside a canal in Hertford.

 

Pauline brought a more technologically-driven approach to the theme by using Google Street
View as a window on the past. The software allowed a past year to be selected and the
resultant views provided evidence of the effect of Covid restrictions on the British Museum,
Trafalgar Square and a mosque in Hackney. There was also a notice welcoming hesitant
customers back after a lockdown.

 

Raj showed images of windows and domes within the cathedral at Valencia, along with the
exterior of a bull ring reminiscent of a Roman amphitheatre. These were followed by Southall
temple, an Indian dancer by a window and a passenger looking out from a railway carriage
near Chennai.

 

Dorota’s images included a high-rise window cleaner in Poland, reflections of office buildings
in the City of London, white apartments in Barcelona and a view out from a country house in
Italy. Other images featured an Art Nouveau stained-glass window and a view of a
Christmas tree through a residential bay window.

 

Finally, Julian showed us pairs of shutters in Germany and Russia; a painting showing St
Jerome Antonello da Messina through a window and surrounded by more windows, and a
Howard Hodgkin abstract painting of a window. His additional images included a geometric
pattern of blue windows, and one with scaffolding visible beyond the glass.

 

The next meeting is on Wednesday 12th February, on the theme of Weather but participants in the planned group exhibition are instead encouraged to show their longlist of images.