Last week, many of us will have acquainted ourselves with the uglier side of taking a bus: standing or, if fortunate, sitting elbow-to-elbow with irritated strangers during the Tube strike. Yet despite this, the city’s most popular transport remains the bus – rarely glamorous, occasionally maddening and yet inseparable from the essence of London. The Route 19 exhibition at Belmacz gallery presents itself as more than curatorial whimsy—it's a love letter to the bus route which has drawn more stories around itself than any other, wrapped in a kind of theatrical romance (the 19 goes along Shaftesbury Avenue with all its theatres).
Curated by Adrian Dannatt and Julia Muggenburg, this group-show of nineteen artists takes the viewer on what Dannatt describes as a "perfectly plotted trajectory through the best and worst of London" via the number 19 bus. There’s quite a lot of bus-red here too. Route 19, snaking from Finsbury Park to Battersea Bridge, has indeed served as London's cultural artery for over a century. Walking through the gallery's upper and lower decks—a deliberate nod to the bus itself – you find that the show brings together a fascinatingly eclectic group of artists who have captured the romance of certain stopping points along the route. In this setting, Aidan Crawshaw’s glazed ceramic vessels quietly capture the physical sensations of travel: their slanted, subtle forms recalling the jolt and sway of a passenger’s body caught in the motion of the bus.
