All I Ever Wanted Was Everything – a Secret Salon group show, Peckham Safehouse, London SE15, June 2024 – We’re back in the undergrowth, the underculture, you won’t catch an art show like this on Seb’s list, yer man from the round up won’t be rounding up this one, the self-styled London Art Critic doesn’t get his shoes dirty at artist led events like this one and all the better we are for it, we need exhibitions and events like this where artists throw away the increasingly conservative rule book and come together to just do it themselves. The London art scene is getting more and more conservative by the month, tedious art school rules, rich kid by-the-book gatekeepers with their “do it properly” indoctrination, everything safely locked in place and all far too well behaved. Meanwhile we have an endless line of artists paying thirty odd quid a shot just to take part in a selection process that might, for those who fortunate enough to get through the selection bullshit and the lottery of it all, the honour of taking selfies next to their art at that vanity fest that the RA Summer show has long since become, there they are posting them on their social media with all the pet paintings and the twee landscapes and the small pieces of art so high up on the wall that no one can possibly see them. We need antidoted like this, another slightly disorganised, beautifully fractured Secret Salon show. Last time the Secret Salon was at Free The Gallery over in Crystal Palace, this time we’re at Safehouse Two over in nail bar obsessed Peckham, London SE15, we are, thankfully, a million miles away from the Royal Academy’s Summer show and all those people who watch Grayson bloody Perry on television.
If you haven’t been to Safehouse yet then why ever not? Two spaces, we can’t really call them galleries, two art spaces, adjacent spaces in two falling down shells of houses, they’ve been this way for oh I don’t know, a good half a dozen years or more now (maybe longer, time flies). Two spaces always in use, surrounded by a glorious spaghetti mess of graff, tags, fly-posting for gigs and over-slick street art, I see another My Dog Sighs eye has appeared over the road recently. This week Safehouse One and Two are hosting two shows and two sets of artists in the two semi detached working class houses now barely standing. I imagine who ever owns them has the site earmarked for demolition and development when the time is right, they really are barely standing, walls are missing, plaster is falling off, enough work done to just about make them safe meanwhile the debt collector letters for previous occupiers are still arriving, the Bushey Building is to the back, a tyre garage now converted to a busy car cleaning service to the right, equally busy train line running almost overhead. I like Safehouse and if I ever need my nails painting then Peckham has the answer. We’ll get to the other show in a moment, something called Renters, something about the plight of people who have no choice but to rent, more in a bit (on another page), right now we’re in (the not exactly cheap to rent) space known as Safehouse Two and the latest Secret Salon show.
These Secret Salon shows are something run by rather on-a-shoestring pro-active contemporary artist Andree Adley and her gang, for she does have a gang of ever evolving (mostly young) musicians, fashion designers, painters, vinyl obsessed DJs and once again she’s gathered together a rather colourful set of artists, painters, designers, sound artists, those aforementioned musicians with paint brushes, fashion artists, photographers for a slightly (post) punk flavoured group show, Andree talks about a “Rock’n Roll Pop up Gallery”, last time it was a rather colourful affair over at Free The Gallery in Crystal Palace, this time we’re in Peckham and yes, we, for Andree Adley has once again invited me to participate and seeing as the London art media were one again too busy ticking their weekly round up boxes and keeping themselves safely confined the polite white walled formality that seems to be all their lists are about, I shall once again have to blow my own trumpet. Well not so much blow my own trumpet, but this show’s trumpet and it isn’t my place to write some kind of critical analysis of a show I’m part of, I am merely documenting the fact that this short sharp art show happened last weekend. I suspect there are many art shows that go almost undocumented other than on this website (or previous versions of Organ), actually I don’t suspect, I damn well know it! It is one of the reasons Organ still exists (in this smaller format), like we’ve said many times before, it is a dirty job but someone has to do it. Faith no more? Nah mate, I never have had any faith in the London art media.
So we’re overseas, over the river in Peckham, we’ve gone South, caught the train from Haggerston, it kind of feels like Hackney Wick six or seven years ago, the venue itself is a crumbling semi detached terrace house, no space for a garden, hemmed in both front and back, a once very modest home in a then not very posh area of London (it still isn’t really). Show curator Andree Adley is holding court and has set up a rather religious alter in the darkness of the bricked up window of the downstairs front room, an alter featuring three of her deliciously Kitsch pop art cross pieces that work so well as they glow in the gloom and the spotlight that’s picking up the broken bits of jewellery. There’s the slightly anarchic Cats Who Smoke, the slightly urban art flavoured paintings of American artist Timothy Midnight, he’s sharing Andree’s downstairs space – I can’t honestly say the idea of cats smoking does it for me, there’s nothing cool about smoking, there is an energy to Timothy’s work though, an urgency, a cartoonish undercurrent, they look animated, I like is work, his art, if only they weren’t smoking (I detest smoking and the glamourising of said addictive life-destroying habit, there’s nothing rock ‘n roll about it whatever any fag in gob guitarist might try and tell you, we’ve lost some good friends and indeed close family members to smoking addiction, it just isn’t cool). Also downstairs in the semi dark with the cats and the crosses, (there is no lighting in the house) there’s a couple of graphic design flavoured pieces from artist Michael Coles, meanwhile in the hall the energetic creativity of fashion designer Dolly Adley, is Dolly a fashion designer? More a multi media artist really, a content creator? a force? A ball of colourful energy? I like what she done with broken frames and photocopiers (or printers) and lack and white imagery in here, I like that she has clothes hanging in dark corners next to the semi-religious crosses and animated cat paintings and bills left for previous occupants long gone.
I like that you need to explore the nooks and crannies in here, the accidental details, that there are marks already on the crumbling walls and the decaying plaster, the ghosts of previous exhibitions or occupants maybe? I like that you can see people walking around upstairs through the cracks in the floorboards above our heads. The back room is particularly dark, there a projector casting images on part on the wall as well as the bricked up back room window, the work of artists from all over the globe brought together as a Secret Salon Projekt, images running on a projected loop alongside some music or maybe sound art, kind of relaxing in the darkness of that backroom…
I’m upstairs in the relative sunlight of the big front room, well my paintings are, no time to be formal up here, just hang of the nails that are already there, hanging there on the crumbling plaster sharing space, alongside the handmade Riot Grrrl lino prints or Emma Harvey, her black and white (or pink or yellow) two colour Rebel Girl images of Joan Jett, Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, Poly Styrene,alongside the rather beautiful paintings of Amélie, or Amélie Midnight, as she is billed for this show (do like these four Amélie paintings upstairs). The manipulated book pages of the self-styled Naked Artist Suzie Pinder are over there looking strong on the decaying walls, meanwhile the sound upstairs is (perfectly) provided by artist Henri Parnell, a sound artist who has created a rather impressive alternative sound track for edited parts of an Ingmar Bergman film that’s running on a TV screen – Henri is one of the people who make up the rather fine band called Jesus And The Zealots alongside participating artist Angel Adley, who for this show might just might be part of Lizard Lizard who in turn have built another alter, this time something to do with worshipping John Travolta – do like that Lizard Lizard Fruitcake bag! Is Angel a Lizard Lizard? Hang on, let me check, yes Angel is, alongside artistic partner in crime Finn Ramsay.
Next to Lizard Lizard we find Adrian Zeqja, a photographer by trade, he has a rather large piece of dark pink almost blood red and black creativity, a kind of DIY blown up piece of his work in am ambitiously large found frame, a rather audacious frame that rather works in here – the fact that Adrian is wearing a Pig Destroyer t-shirt might offer a clue in terms of his art, then again maybe it doesn’t? Adrian is another fine example of who or what what you might expect to encounter at a Secret Salon show, truth is you never know who or what you’re going to find but you do know, based on the two shows we’ve encountered so far, you do know that there’s going to be something interesting, that a risk or two is going to be taken, that Andree is not a conservative curator, that’ she’s not afraid to take a risk and sometimes get it wrong as she mostly gets it very right.
There’s a Hafsah piece hanging from the ceiling, another fashion designer, well in terms of this show, or maybe Hafsah is a contemporary artist who has chosen to work on a piece of clothing for this show? Truth is I don’t really know, I can tell you Hafsah (Hafs a.h?) is an artist who describes his dream career as ice road trucker and who didn’t want to do that and how cool is Lisa Kelly? Do like that Hafsah piece hanging there…
Do love the mix of people and art in this latest Secret Salon exhibition (as well as the mix of people coming to see it), this is a show that probably shouldn’t have worked, this surely isn’t how you are supposed to do it? And no I didn’t like everything but then when did anyone ever like everything in a really positively ambitious group show? I like the attitude at these Secret Salon shows, I loved taking part, this is how you do it, throw away your book and your rules and take a risk or two, everything we want from an artist led group show, a show that really really did work, a show that was prepared to take a risk or two and, even if I do say so myself, gawd how we need shows like this right now. (sw)
Previously –
As always, please click on an image to see the whole thing or t orun the svlide show…
THE ORGAN 