SPACE Now - 40th Anniversary Exhibition

SPACE (Space, Provision Artistic, Cultural, Educational) is a cultural regeneration agency providing London artists with studio space since its inception in 1968. This year’s SPACE NOW exhibition celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the organisation’s work.

Artists often become sidelined as superfluous in the professional world, as do many working in the creative sector. So providing work space for painters and sculptors isn’t always a priority. Yet our need for culture remains.
As there is no doubt that physical environs influence a person’s approach to work there is a legitimate need for artists to have work spaces mighty enough to house their ideas without restriction. This is particularly pertinent for Londoners shoehorned into small living spaces, which are hardly fertile breeding grounds for grand concepts.

Founded by a group of art enthusiasts including Bridget Riley, Peter Sedgely and Peter Townsend, the organisation sources and maintains artist space for over 600 artists in the city of London. Born of an initial project in a warehouse at St. Katherine’s Docks back in the 1960s, (now a gentrified little oasis near Tower Bridge), available work space varies from factory buildings to public libraries, townhouses and warehouses.

As East London rapidly develops affordable studio space is limited, and funding is needed if SPACE is to continue. The SPACE NOW exhibition backs a fundraising campaign, Support Art At Its Source, to uphold the organisation and its work to engender London art; all the work on display at the Mare Street headquarters in Hackney is up for sale, with artists donating some of the proceeds to the fund. The collection is made up of work from a selection of artists who have benefitted from SPACE studios across the city, including Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger, whose Self Portrait(Tahoma) is featured. Carefully chosen by Caroline Douglas of Arts Council Collection, SPACE NOW is a strikingly disparate collection of mixed media, sculpture, photography and painting in keeping with SPACE’s mission to foster all creative styles, however unconventional the expression.

Amongst the work is Josh Baum’s playful EXPERIMENTS, a set of miniature paper, glass and vellum structures. These diminutive inventions depict various scientific inventions and scenarios, such as the Instrument for measuring Mexicans, Microscope for the observing of angels, and a tiny rocketing Astronaut. Paul Green’s six mini watercolours show a sedate series of household windows from the inside, which will no doubt remind visitors of their own interiors, while the click of John Frankland’s 16 screen tests,  a series of slides of plastic bags (yes, like the ones gracing our kitchen cupboards), echoes reassuringly on throughout the space. Fiona Merchant’s cardboard fungus, The Certainty in Question, towers above visitors making their way into the back room, while Leigh Clarke’s Hackney Gazette headlines scream out happily from different vantage points in the gallery.

SPACE NOW is a free exhibition, and if you’re interested in becoming a patron contact SPACE at: development@spacestudios.org.uk. Alternatively, if you own a property and fancy giving some art a temporary home, please write to: mail@spacestudios.org.uk.

The exhibition also celebrates the launch of the SPACE online gallery: www.spacestudios.org.uk, an interactive forum where artists can display work and engage in discussion thereof, both with other artists and members of the public. Artists can register on the site and book studio space, and a range of multimedia courses are on offer, such as training in Indesign, Photoshop or working with video. Upcoming exhibitions are listed, and if you’re interested in how and why SPACE began, check out the 1968 film made by the founders.

SPACE continues to extend art from the studio into the community via workshops, courses and education programmes with youth communities, promoting the idea of art for the masses, not the elite few. Hopefully SPACE will be able to go on providing studios for visual artists in an increasingly expensive city.

Lara Kavanagh

SPACE Now: 40th Anniversary Exhibition , until 26th July, SPACE,  129 – 131 Mare Street, London, E8 3RH

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