Lifting the spirit

Olaf Street sounds as though it should be in some Scandinavian city or other. No doubt there’s a street so named in several Norwegian towns, but there is also an Olaf Street in London W11, of mysterious origin. Could King Olaf II of Norway, fresh from asserting his suzerainty in the Orkneys, have decided to celebrate by keeping an English mistress in what was to become West Kensington a thousand years later? For those who can’t always afford taxis it’s an area which is now served, if somewhat erratically, by Latimer Road Underground Station and the 295 bus; but, whatever its beginnings, Olaf Street, London W11 is still off the beaten track and it’s a very surprising place in which to come across a large and exceptionally elegant modern art gallery. This gallery, sensitively transformed from a yellow- and red-brick coachworks, is part of the Louise T. Blouin Foundation and Institute. Within it, lectures on weighty subjects are held.

There are many strange aspects about this location. It’s not in Notting Hill, nor is it in Shepherds Bush exactly. It’s in a sort of no-man’s-land between the two. A street sign proclaims that Olaf Street is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea but an application on a lamp post for the Louise T. Blouin Institute to hold parties and stay open after midnight indicates that the very same street belongs to Hammersmith and Fulham. It’s not until after dark that a more transcendent truth becomes manifest. At night, a permanent ‘lightwork’ by the Los Angeles-born artist James Turrell transforms this remarkable creation of Louise T. Blouin McBain — the partially New York-based, jet-setting French–Canadian mover, shaker, socialite, philanthropist and art-magazine owner — into a very bravely located cultural outpost of North America.

A year ago a James Turrell show marked the opening of this unusual Institute.