Ben West investigates the growth in unusual exhibition venues — from brothel to butcher’s shop
The economic downturn has forced many of us to rethink how we operate. This is especially so in the arts, an area that has always struggled for funding, and where cuts are inevitably huge considering all the hospitals and schools we need to keep afloat — not to mention a sparkling new Olympic village to complete.
Last month the government announced that it wishes to make cuts to the arts of 25 per cent over the next four years. However, in many areas, until now at least, tightened budgets have not been overly discernible: for example, you may have seen a slightly thinner programme in theatres, or fewer films in production in an already overcrowded marketplace. Yet in the area of visual arts a little revolution has been under way.
While subsidised exhibition spaces are vulnerable to swingeing cuts, commercial galleries struggle even more. For many, splashing out on a pricey new artwork comes pretty low on the list of priorities. However, art spaces are flourishing, with an increasing trend towards alternative, often temporary, ones — in theatres, hospitals, churches, hotels, industrial spaces, private homes and commercial business premises, including shops that have closed down.
According to the Empty Shops Network, an informal group of temporary UK galleries and community spaces, about 13 per cent of the UK’s shops are currently empty and turning them into art galleries brings visitors back to Britain’s town centres.
Temporary art spaces are not a particularly new idea — in Victorian times painters would travel each summer from London to Cornwall to use fishermen’s sheds as studios and to display and sell their work — yet unconventional spaces are springing up, with collectives, such as Meanwhile Space and Brighton’s CompARTment, supporting like-minded artists.
One significant new London gallery that opened last month, Blackfriars Road, is housed in the premises of a thriving market-research company. It is an excellent example of how commerce and art can work successfully in tandem. A near-neighbour of Tate Modern, it has surprisingly spacious rooms which can display more than 50 artworks on two floors. When you leave the sleek bright white expanse of the gallery by the internal door you step into a completely different corporate world, of corridors of grey carpeting and bland office furniture. The standard of the inaugural exhibition was high: a survey of film, paintings and prints selected from this year’s graduates and post-graduates from the Royal College of Art, Royal Academy Schools, the Slade and Central St Martins.
Alex Fox, artist and curator of Blackfriars Road, says, ‘It was just an office, with carpet tiles, so many doors and windows, and not much hanging space. So it was a big challenge to transform it so that it looked right.’ He has experience of exhibiting in commercial spaces, though, having taken part in an exhibition earlier in the year at the Canary Wharf offices of the law firm Clifford Chance, which hires independent art curators to put on regular exhibitions.
‘This is an interesting time,’ Fox says. ‘Galleries are struggling, they have fixed overheads and their business model is really under pressure. This is a very good way to put on exhibitions at a lower cost. Art collectors like discovering new spaces, and it is interesting to present work in a new context.’
Julian Green of Viewpoint Services, which has provided the Blackfriars Road exhibition space, says, ‘I was on a sales trip in Germany visiting a similar company. I noticed the impressive collection of art on their walls and thought that we could make our offices more attractive in this way.
‘It has certainly been a more complicated experience than I first envisaged. Initially, it seems straightforward — to provide the premises, get the space ready and put out press releases, but I have found that mixing a commercial business with artists’ sensitivities is not so simple. I am not sure it would appeal to every company. However, there hasn’t been a huge financial outlay, and I think that as there is an altruistic element it is a price worth paying.’
It is a win-win situation: struggling artists have a superb exhibition space, and the hundreds of visitors to Viewpoint Services are able to step into an invigorating, absorbing creative world. As well as benefiting from the kudos of having its own art gallery, the market-research firm will profit from sales of the artworks.
Beatrice Haines, a recent printmaking graduate from the Royal College of Art, took part in an exhibition with prints, sculpture, drawings, a lightbox and videos in a Kensington brothel earlier this year. ‘There were a couple of dodgy experiences we had at the brothel,’ she says. ‘We went to measure up the place and a prostitute was in there with a client; it was all a bit awkward. But we were really interested in putting a show where people are constantly passing through the space. Some of the prostitutes had a look at the show.’
Haines is currently organising an exhibition in a derelict butcher’s shop in Camden in September. ‘There are art snobs who feel art should be in a gallery but these days you can’t always do that,’ she says. ‘If a shop is available to show your work it is worth taking the risk. Public spaces mean you get a more diverse audience than in a conventional gallery, and you often get a bigger audience as well. A lot of artists prefer showing in spaces that aren’t just white walls as they have their own charm and character built into them, which gallery spaces wash out.’
But what about quality control? If every Tom, Dick and Harry sets up their own art space in the local café, don’t standards plunge? Last year the Arts Council launched its ‘Art in empty spaces’ scheme, a £500,000 initiative to help hundreds of artists and arts organisations turn vacant spaces into artistic places. Applicants for grants are required to reach a ‘quality threshold’. Andrew Brown, senior strategy officer for visual arts at the Arts Council, explains: ‘If you look back in time at similar moments, for example, the late 1980s and early 1990s when there was a downturn in the economy, artists filled the vacuum and regenerated areas,’ he says. ‘They tend to bring with them other creative industries, and in time cafés, restaurants and other services follow. With our scheme we wanted somehow to counteract the recession and regenerate areas. It is an excellent way to bring art to a new audience.’
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