fast and loose (my dead gallery)

Opening party: Friday 13 October, 6 to 9 pm
Opening times: 13 October to 5 November, Friday to Sunday, 1 to 6pm
at Fieldgate Gallery, 14 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES (tel: 07957 228351, tube: Aldgate East or Whitechapel, map)

To contact the curators call Pierre/Gary on 020 8880 5507 or on@thecentreofattention.org

fast and loose (my dead gallery) / London 1956-2006

curated by the Centre of Attention

We decided to look into our past and look at other radical, interesting, avant-garde spaces and endeavours in London in the last 50 years or so. What we found was fascinating and inspiring and what amounts to a secret history of the London Art world.

Our exercise in Ancestor Worship is aimed at drawing attention to these virtually undocumented endeavours and at creating a total art work using these art interfaces/spaces as the material.

We have focused on the entities that share with us a curatorial quality and come some way as exemplifying the gallery as producer, the space as the author, which is to say that the space can be the artist. And like the artist it manifests its own tropes, its own sensibilities and styles, and its own identity and life.

While very different, these spaces share a few characteristics. Against the prevailing orthodoxies of their time either in subject, form, content or materials, they all existed in an underground relation to the cultural mainstream. As pioneers looking for a greater freedom, many were vociferous in their criticism of the art worlds they were finding themselves in.

Powered by Idealistic impulses transformed into pragmatic forces, they set to present work outside the established structures and create vital nexus with new peer groups.

And yet it would seem that they all failed, in that they no longer exist.
But to us, they are an Injunction to FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.

With fast and loose (my dead gallery), we bring back to you:

. the New Vision Centre (1956-65)
. Signals (64-66)
. London Free School (66)
. Indica (65-67)
. Arts Lab (67-69)
. Gallery House (72-73)
. The Gallery (73-78)
. 2B Butler's Wharf (75-78)
. Fantasy Factory (75-93)
. Art Meeting Place
. B2 (79-84)
. NeTWork 21 (86)
. The Women's Art Library/Make (82-2002)
. Bank (91-99)
. workfortheeyetodo (93-98)
...

With thanks to Richard Ducker, Sonya Park, Rosetta Brooks, Sigi Krauss, David Medalla, Guy Brett, Robin Klassnik, Andrew Wilson, Barry Miles, Susan Hiller, John Blandy, Dave Tomlin, Sue Hall, John 'Hoppy' Hopkins, John Dunbar, Dr Stella Santacatterina, Dr Nick Bowen, Sebastian Boyle, NP James, Vaughan Grylls, Miriam Tinguely, David Critchley, Akiko Hada, David Dawson, Rebecca John, John Sharkey, Simon Cutts, Althea Greenan, Bruno de Florence, Thomas Mutke, James Birch, Margaret Garlake, Jim Haynes, Genesis P-Orridge, Simon Bedwell, Milly Thompson, Chrissie Iles, Derek Culley, John Rastall and the many others who helped and supported us for this show.

The Centre of Attention, 67 Clapton Common, London E5 9AA tel 020 8880 5507