I love London in the Summer, though many might argue. I love the art in parks, the getting out and discovering new lost and unfound museums and galleries, and occasionally escaping on a train to the seaside, but whilst the tourists crowd the big attractions, I go small.
As you walk through Kensington Gardens, there is a little Pavilion that far outshines the big brown one currently on the Serpentine lawn. It is meant for children being sponsored by Lego, but its joyful colour and interactive elements brings out the child in me and a lot of other adults, like my mother 93, reminding us of the 1960’s Fun Palace, conceived by Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood as a laboratory of fun; Congratulations Peter Cook. Best Pavilion in 10 years.
It is the same with the Serpentine Gallery, everyone goes to the main stage, often forgetting that these days the best shows seem to be in the smaller North wing. In recent years, they seem to be putting up a courageous fight to keep octogenarian women artists in sight with major shows by Barbara Chase-Riboud, Judy Chicago, and now the formidable Arpita Singh, whose body of work soon put me straight about not having seen her paintings before. It was a revelatory lesson in storytelling of the conscious state and the unconscious nature of being. She is playfully figurative, politically erudite, and mesmeric in her use of inscribed lettering; nothing is left out in her depiction of how we carry it all with us —our past, our heritage, our ancestors —into these celebratory paintings. It makes me wonder if you have to be in your 80s to be acknowledged as a female artist by these large institutions, as Paula Rego had to wait, but at least they weren’t dead like poor old Ithell Colquhoun. Just saying, male artists never seem to have to wait that long. But perhaps the cliché of novel writing should also be adopted in art, wait til you’re over 40 and you’ve got an original language of your own.
Little and Large was a 1970s comedy routine, and sometimes the art world feels like that too, how to be taken seriously by the Big curators, the art market and by the artists who exhibit. Having a small gallery is difficult when you’re up against large institutions that hold the power to draw in the punters with their massive advertising budgets. Isn’t it enough that they are the Tate, the National Gallery, etc? Charging 20quid a pop. People will always turn up and go, but try being The John Marchant Gallery down the back lanes in Brighton, who consistently puts on interesting, popular and avant-garde shows for free, unless you purchase a piece.
Currently, he has a fascinating documentary show featuring The Neo Naturists of the 1970s-90s (Top Photo), including photographs of their ritualistic body painting art and pagan ceremonies, films, and a selection of their paintings, ceramics, and prints, all for £50. It’s all excellently curated into a small space, and it’s fun feminism, especially if you like the esoteric. They just had their chance to shine in a big way during the Tate Britain Women in Revolt! We visited the Edinburgh Galleries of Scotland and the Whitworth in Manchester. The Neo Naturists are artists Wilma Johnson and the Binnie sisters, Christine and Jennifer (with occasional add-ons like Grayson Perry), who also feature in the Leigh Bowery! The show is still on at the Tate Modern til 31st Aug. I’m really looking forward to Wilma Johnson’s show of new paintings, Ghosts of the Madrugada, which is on 12-25th September at Highgate Gallery; also free. The Neo Naturists will be getting gongs as cultural treasures, I’m sure, damehoods all at 80!
We Are Sweet’Art, a feminist collective, celebrates Romani month with a standout show of work at their little Art By Pass Gallery, Held Tradderly by Corinna Eastwood, A Romani Gypsy Artist and Academic who has made an exhibition so personal about identity, grief and cultural loss, it catches in your throat. These small sculptural assemblages are both tender and grotesque, the sort of yucky you can’t take your watering eyes off. The photographs of coffins and Corinna as a Romani witch pull it all together; it’s like a photo love story from a very cult teen magazine.
It makes you feel that you are at a funeral of not only both her parents but her whole community. The shame is not only the shadow cast upon Gypsies, but reflects back upon us as a nation and the profound loss of a people who have held their tradition, who know their identity, in the way the British do not. Oh the irony of racism. Her work is currently being collected by Worcester Museum and a show at The Museum of London in November with Delaine Le Bas and Dan Turner is one to look out for.
Suppose you are a curious cat or like me, who enjoys discovering what is really going on in the art world behind all that Frieze/ Cork Street hullabaloo. In that case, it may take walking boots, bike rides or getting on a train, but find these small galleries and you will discover a lusty treasure trove that will make you want to find more. Big isn’t always better; the perfect but small Egyptian Petrie Museum is proof enough compared to the British Museum’s Egyptology department.In the louder you shout, the faster you go mantra of today’s social media, it becomes exhausting to ignore Big Stuff, but take a breath, slow down and discover something for yourself of meaning. Art is not all about Show me the money. It makes me hopeful when small still can just about exist in this jostling, greedy global world, because art was never about NFTs, that’s the art money market, but my money is on the real stuff; the surreal stuff that makes you feel stuff. Find the small, support it, cherish it, just because it isn’t BIG, because we were all small too, once upon a time.
PS. Check out @MartinRichman Sculpture light refracting joyful chandeliers @OnionGardenCIC. A magical Community Garden off Victoria Street. The anniversary show 1985-2025 Connecting Thin Black Lines at The ICA – The Baby Barbican. Now a small place that was once so culturally significant. How did that happen?
Serpentine Galleries – Lego Pavilion up all Summer. Arpita Singh ‘Remembering’ until 27th July in North Pavilion, Kensington www.serpentinegalleries.org
Corinna Eastwood – @we_are_sweet_art/ Art By Pass Gallery on Dalston Lane. East London. info@wearesweetart.com by appointment only until 27th June.
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology -University College London, Malet Place, London WC1E 6BT. Open at odd times
The Onion Garden is open every day – 4 Seaforth Place
ICA is on the Mall. @ICAART.org.