Gallery grunge
I’m lucky enough to know not one, not two, but three people who own their own art galleries. OK, most of them are about the size of a broom cupboard and located in arty parts of town like Elephant and Castle and Vauxhall, but from little acorns and all that. Besides, whenever they have openings I get an invite to the “free bar” parties; and a free bar is great no matter where in London you find it. Most of the time the attendees are people like me; young-ish with a passionate interest in the arts, but not much spare cash to throw in the direction of a struggling artist or a struggling gallery owner.
However, one of my friends scored a bit of a coup recently thanks to a colleague’s sister’s cousin – or some equally tortuous connection. This colleague’s sister’s cousin had spent a lot of time volunteering in Africa and had struck up a friendship with one of the next big things in indigenous African art. When he was looking for somewhere for his first London show, he asked her advice and, before she knew what was happening, my friend with the gallery found herself besieged with requests from the media and ladies who long for invites to the opening. I was sure I was going to get left off the guest list, but it appears she remembered that tiny portrait I bought from her shop for about £50 three years ago, because about a week before the big event an invitation dropped into my in-box.
Wow. That was a weird night. There were the usual grungy gallery crowd mixing with immaculately coiffured ladies clutching onto their Hermes handbags as if my friend had invited a bunch of loveable Cockney pickpockets into her gallery and not just a bunch of her friends. My highlight of the evening had to be when one of the moneyed “art lovers” cornered my coloured friend Sam, a waiter by day and sex store cashier at night, and asked him all about his upbringing in Africa. She didn’t even have the good sense to look embarrassed when Sam pointed her in the direction of the actual artist himself. Seems money can buy you a lot of things, but not class!
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