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The Outsider
 

Here, at The Shape of Things, I’m not sure I’m at the right place until I notice a friendly couple struggling to rehang an Open Houses banner which has been trying to follow the kite surfers to Paris . The large front room is dominated by Fernando Ayuela’s splendid, large, abstract acrylics in wonderful colours. If only I had the wall space I’d happily fill it with Goddess of Plenty or Demisiado. A second room displays the photography of Flip Wibbly Jelly, a “lens-based artist” whose pictures here are of the London cityscape at dusk and of Nyksund in the Norwegian Arctic circle in what I take to be the sunshine and darkness of the midnight sun.



 
Is Biscuit Studio at 12a and 12b Wilbury Grove one venue or two? There are two listings, but afterwards I only seem to have been in one place. Maybe it’s an existential dichotomy. Sorry, you get like that when you read some of the blurbs you’re handed. Kellie Miller, already a very successful artist, has developed a form of wall-mounted ceramics – pictures combining slipcast ceramics, wood, oils and gesso. They’re intriguing, something like fields and countryside viewed from above. She was charming to meet, but I’m flummoxed by this sort of thing in a pamphlet written by Kate Blok: “In the context of her own development, she has now set aside the quest for a Utopian ideal of the dyad and draws together a community of pieces coexisting in infinitely varied structures.” I can tell I’m going to have to try harder if I’m going to have a career in art criticism. Her work is shown alongside smaller ceramic constructions by Japanese artist Seiko Kumon, and the studio also shows light, contemporary vases, wall plaques and even buttons by Tessa Wolfe Murray and guest artists.
Time for lunch. There’s no shortage of choice on this route, but today it’s Italian at Leonardo Restaurant at 55 Church Road , appropriately “Where the food is Art” according to its website. The walls are hung with black and white pictures of Italian film stars, there are 80 numbered starters and mains on the menu and the only unpromising element is the functional, Formica-ish tables. Ignore them. My agnolotti (pasta filled with veal in a cream and mushroom sauce) was as fresh and delicious as you could want, with a detectable slug of wine in the sauce. The bodyguard’s Leonardo pizza (lots of Parma ham and rocket) looked a picture and was “very nice and crisp”. My tiramisu was refreshingly light, while the crème brulée was declared “vaguely lemony”.
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