Spectrum London
Encyclopedia
Go West (exhibition)
Go West is the title of the first exhibition by Stuckist artists in a commercial London West End gallery. It was staged in Spectrum London gallery in October 2006...
, the first commercial West End
West End of London
The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...
show of the Stuckists
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
, and a retrospective by Sebastian Horsley
Sebastian Horsley
Sebastian Horsley was a London artist best known for having undergone a voluntary crucifixion. Horsley's writing often revolved around his dysfunctional family, his drug addictions, sex, and his reliance on prostitutes.-Background:Horsley was born in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire...
. It closed in 2008.
History
In June 2005, the Spectrum London had a show of photographs by Dennis MorrisDennis Morris
Dennis Morris is a British photographer best known for his images of Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols.In 1979, he created the logo for the band Public Image Limited and the legendary and innovative Metal Box album packaging....
documenting the daily lives, ceremonies and rituals of the Mowanjum Australian Aborigine
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
community. The gallery was blessed by Aboriginal tribe leader, Francis Firebrace, wearing body paint and tribal dress.
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
, in the exhibition Go West
Go West (exhibition)
Go West is the title of the first exhibition by Stuckist artists in a commercial London West End gallery. It was staged in Spectrum London gallery in October 2006...
in October 2006. This "major central London exhibition" elevated the hitherto artworld outsiders into "major players", and occasioned controversy because of a satirical painting of Sir Nicholas Serota
Nicholas Serota
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...
and nude paintings of Stella Vine
Stella Vine
Stella Vine is an English artist, who lives and works in London. Her work is figurative painting with subject matter drawn from either her personal life of family, friends and school, or rock stars, royalty and celebrities.After a difficult relationship with her stepfather, she left home and in...
by her ex husband Charles Thomson
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...
." Ten leading Stuckist artists were exhibited. Thomson's and Joe Machine
Joe Machine
Joe Machine is an English artist, poet and writer. He is a founding member of the Stuckists art group. His work is "raw and autobiographical".-Life:...
's paintings sold, before the show opened, to buyers from the UK, Japan and the US.
Royden Prior, the director of Spectrum London, said, "These artists are good and are part of history. Get past the art politics and look at the work." Edward Lucie-Smith
Edward Lucie-Smith
John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith is a British writer, poet, art critic, curator, broadcaster and author of exhibition catalogues.-Biography:Lucie-Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, moving to the United Kingdom in 1946...
wrote an essay for the show.
The gallery also exhibited work by Michael Dickinson, who was released from ten days in a Turkish jail without charge after exhibiting a collage of the Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdoğan, as a dog.
In March 2006, in association with Sceptre publishing and the Italian Cultural Institute, Spectrum London presented author John Berendt in conversation with Venetian artist, Ludovico de Luigi
Ludovico de luigi
Ludovico de Luigi is a contemporary Italian sculptor and painter living in Venice.-Career:De Luigi first exhibition was in 1965 with his one-man show at the Gallery ‘Il Canale’ in Venice which included two large works, views of a decaying and monumental Venice invaded by waves of insects and other...
, during the artist's first solo show in the UK.
Sebastian Horsley
Sebastian Horsley was a London artist best known for having undergone a voluntary crucifixion. Horsley's writing often revolved around his dysfunctional family, his drug addictions, sex, and his reliance on prostitutes.-Background:Horsley was born in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire...
. Horsley became known when he underwent a crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
; this show documented his diving in Australian shark-infested water and copiously ingesting deadly drugs.
Other artists previously shown at the gallery include Lennie Lee
Lennie Lee
Lennie Lee is a South African conceptual artist who lives and works in London.-Life and career:Lennie Lee is a British artist born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He moved to the UK in 1960. He was educated at Dulwich college in London before winning a scholarship to study philosophy at Christ...
, , Rita Duffy, Peter Murphy
Peter Murphy (artist)
Peter Murphy is an English artist working in traditional egg tempera and gold leaf techniques, and a member of the Stuckist art movement.-Life and work:...
, Cheryl Brooks, Peter Burke
Peter Burke
Peter Burke is a British historian and professor.He was born to a Roman Catholic father and Jewish mother . He was educated by the Jesuits and at St John's College, Oxford, and was a doctoral candidate at St Antony's College...
, Antonio Riello, Gerry Burns (winner of the Daily Mail's
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
inaugural "Not The Turner Prize", Sir Peter Blake
Peter Blake (artist)
Sir Peter Thomas Blake, KBE, CBE, RDI, RA is an English pop artist, best known for his design of the sleeve for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He lives in Chiswick, London, UK.-Career:...
and Eduardo Paolozzi
Eduardo Paolozzi
Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi, KBE, RA , was a Scottish sculptor and artist. He was a major figure in the international art sphere, while, working on his own interpretation and vision of the world. Paolozzi investigated how we can fit into the modern world to resemble our fragmented civilization...
.
Spectrum London exhibited at the London Art Fair and Art Madrid.
The gallery was at 77 Great Titchfield Street
Great Titchfield Street
Great Titchfield Street is a street in the West End of London. It runs north from Oxford Street to Greenwell Street, just short of the busy A501 Marylebone Road and Euston Road. It lies within the informally designated London area of Fitzrovia. In administrative terms it is in the City of Westminster...
, London W1. It shut in 2008.
External links
- http://www.spectrumlondon.co.uk Spectrum London official website (no longer online)