FOR ALL those who believe modern art is rubbish just what will you make of a new London art gallery set up in a yellow building site skip? Not an enlarged building-sized version but an actual one.
They’ll struggle to fit in the art works let alone the gallery attendants, but London-based artists Catherine Borokowski and Lee Baker have ‘skipped’ many of the formalities of traditional, white-walled, multi-roomed exhibition spaces to turn their gallery into a sculpture-like statement. Art exhibited within a work of art, so to speak.
It has its benefits. Having such a small gallery can be handy when you want to be more mobile. Can you imagine Charles Saatchi carting off his Sloane Square-based gallery on a spontaneous tour of London’s inner cities or circumnavigating the British coastline on an educational road trip? With the Skip Gallery this is at least possible. It’s currently being installed in various locations across London where the artists hope it “will act as a disruptive environment to inspire discourse”.
They have attracted one or two well-known names such as Manchester artist David Shrigley whose ‘Really Good’ thumbs up sculpture currently stands on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Last month his Look at This sculpture/installation was the sole exhibit in the Skip Gallery, which was placed in a parking space opposite Hoxton Square. So from Trafalgar Square to Hoxton Square with a powerful art statement that bridges the commonplace with the high and mighty.
