This Time Next Year We'll Be Millionaires

 

The following essay is a short look at the Hannah Barry Gallery, a South London based commercial gallery founded in 2007 by the eponymous Hannah Barry and Sven Münder, as a rudimentary case study of the many small arts organisations continually emerging throughout the capital. The gallery currently exhibits at its main space on Copeland Road, Peckham and on the top two floors of the nearby multi-storey car park, however the origins of the Hannah Barry Gallery begin at an artists squat both named and located at 78 Lyndhurst Way, also in Peckham.

Squatted spaces around London have an occasional propensity to emulate private versions of the groups they accommodate, in these cases a squatted house has little difference from a private property other than the non payment of rent by its tenants. Whilst this may not have been the case with the squat at Lyndhurst way this particular notion of emulation makes for a good starting point in an examination of the emergence of the Hannah Barry Gallery. In turn, through this examination a great deal can be understood about the gallery as both representative of a blurring of the boundaries between commercial and publicly funded galleries and about the context of a much hyped emerging 'art scene' in South London.

The false astronomy of the consumer

In 2009 the 'Peckham Pavilion' represented the Hannah Barry Gallery at the 53rd Venice Biennale. The Peckham Pavilion website is itself a broader project, documenting the gallery's presence in Venice and “(extending) the parameters of the Pavilion, contributing to the project before, during and after the physical exhibition” ¹ [1]. On the site a page is given to each of the participating artists and to Hannah Barry and Sven Münder “to present work made specifically for the website, and to represent their work featured in the Peckham Pavilion” ² [2]. In addition to this work and information about the Pavilion project each page contains a list of links to local galleries and arts organizations under the heading 'Satellite Galleries'.

Although innocuously functional, the phrase 'Satellite Galleries' appears to be a linguistic slip which unintentionally reveals a particular conception of the Hannah Barry Gallery, and of many young arts organisations, that has become so conventional as to be unconscious. It may be said that a subheading from this mini-site is a tenuous foundation on which to build up any critique, yet it would seem the subheading is a parapraxis, or Freudian slip. If this is the case then it is can be productive to assume, along with Freud, that

“these phenomena are not accidental, that they require more than physiological explanations, that they have a meaning and can be interpreted” ³ [3]

An initial interpretation can begin with the fact that the term satellite, in all its uses, always means an object bound to or in some way dependent on another, the inference being that the satellite is smaller in mass than the other, either physically, symbolically or both. Are we to assume that the Hannah Barry Gallery has a belief that its own importance is such that its gravity is capable of symbolically binding other objects to it, in orbit, on account of their smaller size? In a sense this may not be the intended meaning, especially as the list of 'satellite galleries' includes the 120 year old South London Gallery, however it is hard to be so sure if we look at the gallery's image of itself and the way it presents this image to others. In this respect imagining oneself at the centre of a constellation of cutting edge artistic activity seems to be essential for any contemporary art gallery or organization: The gallery positions itself as a heavy weight contender by representing itself at the vanguard of artistic culture, here edge, not the centre, is the centre.

The gallery takes its cues in this self-aggrandisement from the self belief of the individual in a market economy, where personal desires are paramount. In a market economy the idea of an 'evolution of quality' through freedom of choice is realised through an elevation of the individual consumer's individual decisions: The customer's rational choice is lauded as the most important aspect within the market and any product which falls foul of it cannot be relevant to their lifestyles. So too, in an increasingly market-modelled cultural sphere is an 'evolution of quality' realised by the elevation of the individual gallery goer's individual decisions. The individual is no longer a mere audience member but a consumer whose pattern of consumption is to be mapped and these maps aggregated and followed explicitly.

In this atmosphere the Hannah Barry gallery is seen not as the rigid hierarchical institution of old but, led by emerging artists, curators or gallerists it is the sum of its individual ⁴ [4] parts. It is therefore the choices of these individuals, culminating in the direction of the gallery, that can be seen as a coalescence of their masses as the centre of a solar system or a consumer bloc. The choice of the consumer, and so the gallery, is always predominant as it is made freely by them. In this sense any inference concealed within the term 'satellite' is not arrogance on the part of the gallery, but an essential mechanism of the system.

What we have is a theological geocentricism which is perversely reduced in scale to such a degree that it is indivisible, each individual is the centre of the universe around which everything endlessly rotates. Yet what is needed is not a Copernicus or Galileo as the astronomical truth is both understood and here irrelevant; what neither could reveal in the debate over geocentric and heliocentric models and what is still relevant today, is that the centre of power rests not with the Sun but with those who propagate false astronomies.

Selling the individual

What is important here in addressing the astronomy of consumer individualism is looking at exactly what its effects are on the various configurations within artistic communities. An analysis of those impoverished will often focus on the individual consumers themselves yet groups or organizations forced to adapt to a market logic can equally find themselves at a loss if too eager to swallow the ideology.

As young galleries such as the Hannah Barry gallery move towards an ethos of individualism they simultaneously move away from a curatorial authority which has “a relationship to communities of artistic practice that have distinct cultural and organisational histories” ⁵ [5]which exits at the 'hierarchical' arts institutions. In its place an organization must give their audience, as individuals rather than communities, what it is perceived that they demand. Whilst young galleries have emerged at the pinnacle of the dominance of this logic and so have had no need to adapt a shift can be witnessed in the increasingly consumptive atmosphere of many older arts institutions, from their architecture and interior to the displays and attendant gift shops and cafés. The ongoing adaptation can perhaps be seen most clearly however in a quote from Ekow Eshun, the artistic director of the financially stricken ICA:

“It should be the artistic figures that our audience admires... We should celebrate them in our communications as our heroes, our star names already, because our audience believes they are cool. And we should keep in mind that in a week to a year hence, many of those figures will no longer be relevant because there will be a new set or more urgent names to hail. All that matters is now.” ⁶ [6]

The cruel irony is that when this mission to keep abreast of contemporary opinion delivers a bland and incoherent programming the institution will be damned with the language of consumer choice that it sought to pander to. Many would not mourn the death of the ICA and inevitable others as they are no longer 'relevant'.

As touched on above, the Hannah Barry Gallery's position in regards to an elevation of the individual is representative of the position of many 'emerging' organisations. Whilst portrayed as an organization of individuals the gallery nevertheless remains at its core an organization and so too must pander to the whims of the consumer if it is to survive in a competitive cultural market. However its relationship to the logic of the market is two sided: Not a schizophrenic effect of its many individual members but rather that of a mask and its wearer.

Outwardly the gallery's decentred individuality and position at the cutting edge of an emerging artistic community gives it unparalleled insight into the likes and dislikes of the most contemporary and sophisticated consumers of artistic practices. This position straddles the divide between consumer and producer, a role usually taken by advertisers and PR. The gallery is quite literally relating to the public, yet in its occupation of both public and commercial positions this relationship inevitably becomes ambiguous. This can be evidenced in the fact that the product that the Hannah Barry Gallery produces is individuals; the art work sold and the profile enhancing exhibitions hung are instilled with an aura through the individualisation of every aspect of their production. The fact that it is individuals rather than artworks sold is the way an aura is reinstalled; through the possibility of purchasing not the unique product of artistic genius but a distillation of the unique lifestyle and history of artist, gallery and 'art scene'. Hannah Barry herself recognizes the unique selling power of the individual in her description of the gallery's practice of 'total immersion':

You’re showing people who have no reputation," she explains. "No one knows anything about them. You have to create a situation where people understand what they’re about, and showing them in depth is the first step to doing that. So we have a lot of exhibitions. If you show, say, Christopher Green three times or four times over two years, you are creating a system of opportunities for him. People can see very quickly the progress he’s making.⁷ [7]

Whilst her analysis of 'total immersion' provides a clear view of the outward individualisation of the gallery it also allows for a glimpse behind this facade. Unlike the ICA it would seem that the Hannah Barry gallery is not truly in thrall to the demands of consumer choice, because they understand that the very notion of the rational, impartial choice is deceiving.

It is a deception that occurs on two levels and undermines the supposed centrality of the gallery goer in the cultural solar system. Firstly, although they may not enunciate the logic of consumer opinion with the force of Eshun, Barry's quote above suggests that they don't in fact show what people like at all, rather they tell people what they like. Subtly the market is of course manipulated, the cultural evolution of quality is in fact a selective breeding; a controlled modification with the financial reward implicit in such an apparent prescience of the market's direction.

The second deception stems from this manipulation. Whilst a popular conception has the Hannah Barry Gallery emerging from the primordial slime of a mainly student led art scene, responding as it grows to the stimulus of its 'poor but vibrant' context, the role of the majority of the gallery goers is profoundly misconceived: The audience members are not the ones informing the decisions of the curators and gallerists. Their attendance to private views will often have little relation to the work on show, the event is a social one⁸ [8], an opportunity to further cement one's reputation in the ever changing landscape of the young and the emerging. This is certainly not to say that none like the work, many do, but those that don't will be muted by friendship groups, artificial reputations or the aspiration that one day they too might show with the Hannah Barry Gallery. The 'people' who can see very quickly the progress Christopher Green is making are the collectors. The rest of the audience are essential to the aura of the artworks, and are thanked as such with free drinks at the opening but they are not the consumers, they are the sales pitch.

So far, so conventional, for what has been described is not a radical stance by the Hannah Barry Gallery but a standard model for a commercial gallery, if perhaps in less than coy terms. However what sets the gallery apart is that whilst publicly funded organisations falter with a market logic, as a comercial gallery it is able to take on their traditional roles. The Hannah Barry Gallery does not paint itself as a 'public' organisation, but neither does it often mention its commercial status beyond passing comparisons with Cork Street⁹ [9].

The problem with its decentred status is that in its self imposed charge “to encourage progress and experimentation to help young artists develop their ideas” ¹⁰ [10] there exists a potential for a conflict of interest: It would seem this is keeping very much in line with the privatisation of many other previously publicly funded positions.

The Missionary Position

Although The Hannah Barry Gallery is ambiguous in its self-representation, perhaps seeing itself as beyond a binary of public and commercial galleries, it is easy to see its appropriation of roles once very much the domain of public bodies. If we return again to the notion of satellite galleries we can see that whilst the phrase is revealing in terms of the gallery's understanding of itself, what is specifically being posited as the centre of this solar system is the 'Peckham Pavilion'. The website does not explain the relationship of the Peckham Pavilion to Peckham itself but in the context of the Venice Biennale, with its pavilions owned by individual nations exhibiting work by artists of that nationality, it is perhaps not too great a leap to say that the Pavilion was intended to represent Peckham.

At the Biennale the British pavilion intends the work it exhibits to “significantly raise the profile of the artist and the UK”¹¹ [11] This objective is couched in an unambiguously commercial language, expressing an intent to raise the value of a particularly lucrative cultural export, and it would seem that this is what the Hannah Barry Gallery with its simulated 'Peckham' pavillion. Indeed the hugely positive media response to the Pavilion was summed up in the feeling that “Hannah Barry had officially succeeded in putting Peckham on the international art map” ¹² [12]. Yet the British Pavilion is managed by The British Council and the artist commissioned with the help of a selection committee drawn from outside the Council, likewise the American Pavilion is run by a public gallery chosen by the Department of State. Whilst the legitimacy of either as representative of their countries artistic communities is perhaps debatable, at the level of an International Biennale their claims are not entirely unreasonable. The Hannah Barry Gallery however has no mandate to represent Peckham, rather the Peckham Pavilion has significantly raised the profile of the artist and The Hannah Barry Gallery. The Hannah Barry Gallery has officially succeeded in putting The Hannah Barry Gallery on the international art map.

The naming of the Peckham Pavilion could potentially be excused as a sly gimmick playing on the existing conventions of the Biennale and the humble origins of a gallery wanting the international exposure Venice could provide. Hannah Barry herself proclaims that it “doesn’t stand for Peckham, or anything that comes from it”¹³ [13], leaving what it does in fact stand for unclear. However in the wider context of the gallery's activities and the language that surrounds them it is perhaps just the most explicit example of its self appointed role in shaping the artistic community of South London.

Once again the 'cultural and organisational histories' of an entire local population are ignored in favour of the gallery's individual “stable of artists barely out of their teens”¹⁴ [14]. Outside of a specific community which has largely grown around the gallery itself the Hannah Barry Gallery has little to do with the Peckham it represents, yet this is easily overcome in popular conceptions of the gallery by simply painting all other communities out of existence. A recurring theme amongst commentators on the gallery's rise is astonishment that it could emerge from Peckham of all places; a hackneyed image of sublime beauty emerging from the depths of urban decay:

"Nothing in this decaying part of London ever suggested that this indeed was going to breed a young art scene, particularly one to challenge the domination of now-glamorous Shoreditch. But so it goes, and cafés, boutiques, real estate investors are sprouting up everywhere. The Hannah Barry Gallery is at the forefront of this charge to creative gentrification” ¹⁵ [15]

The 'Nothing' in the 'decaying part of London' is undoubtedly disingenuous. Even at an institutional level South London contains the well recognised Camberwell College of Art and Goldsmiths College along with the South London and Gasworks galleries, which is to say nothing of countless smaller and community arts spaces and organisations. It would seem that this would provide a more than adequate 'suggestion' and yet the myth is repeated again and again: What more vindication for placing the South London Gallery in the orbit of the Hannah Barry Gallery than have its Director, Margot Heller, eschew her Galleries 120 year history in favour of Hannah Barry's “enormous energy and initiative” in really “(contributing) to a sense of there being a 'scene'”¹⁶ [16].

This bowing down of the public gallery, burdened with its history and hierarchies, to the youthful commercial gallery with its unique insight into the desires of today's cultural consumers is certainly symbolic, not least because buried beneath the floor of the former lies the epithet “the source of art is in the life of a people”¹⁷ [17]. While the Hannah Barry Gallery may not subscribe to the projected cultural wasteland, undoubtedly pointing to the vibrant community as the roots of it evolution, it is certainly beneficial to have others project this in order to model an emerging community in its image. What follows is that the Hannah Barry Gallery is able to usurp the positions and attitudes of a public body in its relation to a wider community; practising an 'education and outreach' which is more than a little missionary in its approach.

The Gallery is tight lipped on its website, with no 'about', 'history' or 'mission' statements, yet it would undoubtedly be difficult to find any explicit pronouncement on the powerful influence it has over the shape and direction of the developing artistic community. However if we return again to the Peckham Pavilion's website we can see the quote from Getrude Stein that heads Hannah Barry's own page:

“Young artists do not need criticism, what they need is praise. They know well enough what is wrong with their work, what they don't know is what is right with it.” ¹⁸ [18]

Although the words are mediated, here things are a little clearer: Young artists only know what is wrong with their work, without the gallery they are lost in a mire of doubt and self criticism, they do not know what is right but the Hannah Barry Gallery can tell them what is right.

This is not merely manipulation of an 'art scene' but importantly for the gallery a manipulation of an art market. The gallery's influence goes unchecked as its youthful individualism means it is treated as a non commercial organisation, a position that obviously throws up a huge conflict of interest. In this duplicity it is able to enjoy the best of both worlds: It is able to sow and reap a market whilst not labouring under the stigma a commercial venture may often encounter at the street level of the cultural sphere. It is able to benefit from the donation of a huge exhibition space from the local council in the shape of the Peckham Rye multi-storey car park without having to uphold the standards expected of a public gallery, such as representing more than a single female artist among 22 males counterparts¹⁹ [19].

The gender bias of the gallery's 'stable' of artists would suggest the only area of London it could be said to represent is Harrow School, yet perhaps its relationship with its location is nothing more than the fact it can provide“acres of space for a fraction of the price you’d pay in the West End” ²⁰ [20]. Here the parallels with a more overt privatisation becomes apparent. Whilst speaking so frankly about financial imperatives may be seen as a little vulgar, reducing your overheads does make sound financial sense. In this context the donation of the Peckham Rye car park to this commercially minded organisation is tantamount to a (local) government subsidy. This obviously creates a vastly uneven playing field; both the Hannah Barry gallery and smaller non-commercial organisations are able to call upon enthusiastic members of the artistic community willing to volunteer their time and skills and often beg, borrow and recycle materials, yet what non-commercial organisations often struggle to find for free is space, even more so with the potential for relatively unconditional use. In the economy of local artistic communities space becomes one of the most valuable assets, the donation of a space as large as the upper floors of a multi-storey car park to a commercial gallery would seem indicative of the attitude towards arts funding by the local government.

Private Initiative

At a time when 'core' funding for arts organisations is becoming increasingly scarce a free and unconditional exhibition space could easily make the difference between life and death for a small arts organisation. What is disturbing about the donation of the Peckham Rye car park space is that in giving it to a commercial gallery the local council seem to be unconcerned about where the obligations of the recipients of such a subsidy lie: By necessity a gallery formulated as a company must have at its core a concern for its financial well being whilst any concerns for a wider community beyond those intricately linked with this well being are inevitably secondary. This is certainly not to say that the Hannah Barry Gallery's formulation as a private limited company precludes them from any concern for the surrounding community but that this relationship cannot ever totally overshadow the bottom line.

government subsidy often accompanies the winning of a particular contract by the recipient in the privatisation of previously public positions. In the case of the Hannah Barry Gallery the process seems to have been reversed: The donation of the car park space, which confers such an advantageous position in terms of the potential for exhibitions and creative development, would appear to award the gallery with the role of directing the development of the South London art community. This 'contract' becomes exclusive due to the scale of the advantage conferred and the gallery's position consequently becomes immovable. The Hannah Barry Gallery becomes a force of nature, “the epicentre of change” ²¹ [21].

This privatisation however is all too often met with scepticism precisely because of the problems of the private entity's obligations. The Hannah Barry Gallery approaches this in a way that parallels the strategies of many other companies involved in public private partnerships; a pseudo corporate responsibility. The Peckham Rye car park is primarily used for 'Bold Tendencies', an annual open air sculpture show, which in its last manifestation invited smaller arts organisations to exhibit on the car park's lower levels. Rather than providing direct assistance to these not-for-profit arts organisations, the local council has instead allowed the Hannah Barry Gallery to dictate the terms of this assistance. What results is something akin to a Victorian philanthropy in which an art community can be involved in an event, in this case made possible by a subsidy, but at the discretion of the Hannah Barry Gallery which is able to decide who are the 'deserving poor' and who are not. Of equal concern with the power bestowed upon the gallery however is that it is not necessarily clear who it is that benefits most from such philanthropic assistance. It is difficult to ascertain exactly how much benefit the smaller organisations gain from their inclusion in 'Bold Tendencies' as the possibility of working in a space such as the car park for the duration of the show is only available through the Hannah Barry Gallery. The benefit for the Hannah Barry Gallery however is perhaps a little clearer in that it undoubtedly profits from an association with other young and emerging organisations and yet is unambiguously presented, both literally and figuratively, as a controlling influence on a higher level.

Whilst the patronage from local government follows a contemporary ardour for privatisation, the ideology of this privatisation is also apparent in the language surrounding the Hannah Barry Gallery itself. Again a lack of statements from the gallery means other sources are more useful in assessing the impact this privatisation might have beyond the immediate artistic community. As quoted above Art in America magazine sees the Hannah Barry Gallery “at the forefront of this charge to creative gentrification” ²² [22] and Peckham Vision places the gallery in the Copeland “Cultural Quarter”²³ [23], a term either invented or usurped by property developers and which, along with creative gentrification, is certainly intended as a spur to private properties in a South London filled with social housing. These effects, whilst hard to ignore, would almost certainly not be endorsed by the gallery, yet the strongest advocacy for an ideology of privatisation can in fact be found in an interview with Hannah Barry herself in the Guardian newspaper, in which she states:

"If you don't have any money, you have to find a way to do what it is you're trying to do. I feel strongly that lack of money should not stand in the way. of anything. ²⁴ [24]

Leaving aside its relationship to an ideology of privatisation for a moment the statement is first and foremost ridiculous. As discussed above, space has become one of the most valuable assets for any emerging art gallery and so to describe the Hannah Barry Gallery as having 'no money' in an article promoting an exhibition taking place in a huge space donated by the local council is disingenuous at best. Yet it is not simply this asset that makes the claim ridiculous, for there is far more to a financial advantage than simply having money. The advantage is of course societal and it is undeniable that those from more affluent backgrounds are far more likely to study at Cambridge university or the one of the London art schools, as have many members of the Hannah Barry Gallery. Moreover the support of established figures such as Anthony d’Offay or Galleries such as the Timothy Taylor Gallery may not be so accessible to the less well off for obvious social reasons and may provide an assistance which money cannot buy. The statement itself was most likely not meant as an analysis of complex socio-economic factors in the funding of an art gallery but is most easily understood as a propagation of the idea of the gallery as a young and innovative organisation, very much a part of the poor area it is emerging from. Yet the belief that a lack of money should not stand in the way of anything is perhaps the belief of someone who has never experienced a lack of money.

Whilst the statement sits in line with the overall image the gallery self-promotes, it also feeds into an ideology of privatisation. The idea that a lack of money should pose no barrier is the liberal heart of neo-liberalism, the conservatively posited meritocracy suggests that with enough hard work anything is possible. This is the laissez-faire liberalism of the small state in which a lack of public funding is no problem for the private individual willing to sweat blood for their desires. Again we return to an individualism that seems to provide the cornerstone of the Hannah Barry Gallery in which the individual is responsible for the creation of the force that places them at the centre of their own personal solar system. Here even astronomical laws can be manipulated by those willing to work hard and any who find themselves trapped in another orbit are obviously not working hard enough. It is generally understood however that this utopian dream of an even playing field has never existed due to nepotism and corruption, not to mention an entire catalogue of social and economic barriers, yet the message seemingly implicit in Hannah Barry's statement is that a lack of Arts funding should not stand in anyone's way: A message hard to swallow standing on the top floor of the Peckham Rye Car Park.

Food for Thought

The image of the primacy of the individual as the central body in a false solar system is one that has been repeated in each section of this essay. The analogy could become stretched, yet as it emerged from the the Hannah Barry Gallery's own use of the word 'Satellite' it has been indispensable in recognizing the ideology of individualism which pervades every facet of the gallery. It is a consumer individualism which both frames the relationship between gallery and its audience and brands the work shown, it is the individualisation of the gallery itself that reorients its image to that of a public body and lastly, it is the ideology of the individual that provides the support for a veiled privatisation in arts funding.

Whilst an individualism is clear at the surface in any analysis of the Hannah Barry Gallery a look beneath the surface reveals that in every instance this ideology provides a veneer which covers the actual practices of the gallery and the power structure that exists between it, an art establishment and the wider community. More often than not this culminates in a masking of the power relations of the gallery: An individualism creates the false impression that the attendant art community is more important than the indispensable collectors, that the gallery will have its relationship with this community as its unrivalled obligation and that it is merely an extraordinarily hard working organisation that enjoys no manner of socio-economic advantage.

Some of the effects of this masking are unjustifiable, the single woman represented by the gallery being particularly staggering, while other effects such as the gallery's position within a proposed gentrification or privatisation are almost to be expected. However what is most troubling for an artistic community in South London is not the deception but the fact that, despite much talk of “a serious, seductive vision” ²⁵ [25] and a proposed assimilation of “Peckham with progress”²⁶ [26] it really is nothing new. All that is needed is a quick look north across the Thames to see that the gallery is following a model firmly established in the East End and an ideology established across the entire country. Far from being a radical change the Hannah Barry Gallery represents the slow, market logic of 'an evolution of quality' as can be evidenced succinctly in the example of 'Frank's Café and Campari Bar'.

'Frank's Café and Campari Bar' built by Paloma Gormley, daughter of Anthony Gormley, and Lettuce Drake was installed on the top floor of the Peckham Rye multi-storey car park for the 2009 incarnation of the Hannah Barry Gallery's 'Bold Tendencies' exhibition. The Café was designed and run by young artists and architects, suggesting a parallel with Caroline Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark's 1970's project 'Food'. Yet the involvement of artists and architects is however where the parallel ends, as 'Food' was conceived as a cooperative venture where artists worked as chefs in a performative role and cheap food was available for both an artistic and wider community: Frank's Café and Campari Bar however seemed to merely replicate the model of the existing restuarant industry, with low wages and expensive fashionable dishes. Without the egalitarian structure or playful amateurism of 'Food', Frank's Café and Campari Bar is merely condemned with a lacklustre comparison to the restaurants it has sought to emulate.

“Ox heart salad, coppa and salami, red and green tomatoes, and grilled aubergines and courgettes with that anchovy sauce made their way, and like everything else wouldn't have been out of place at the bar of St John. "Sorry not to be more creative," was the critique, "but apart from 'perfectly nice' I can't think of a thing to say.”²⁷ [27]

The Guardian review comes across as po-faced and snobbish, yet the reviewer has merely taken the café at its word. 'Food' was undoubtedly a product of its time, yet crucially it attempted to rethink the relations of work, both paid and domestic whilst simultaneously contributing something unique to the surrounding community. Frank's Café and Campari Bar however did not provide any radical alternatives, even to a chic London restaurant scene. Rather it provided the social smokescreen that distracted from the unoriginality of both the exhibition and the ethos of the gallery itself whilst the staff accepted low wages as the only route into the self perpetuating 'art scene'.

This is the kernel of the problem with the Hannah Barry Gallery, it provides no alternative to the already ingrained structures of an institutional art system and even more worryingly it seems to be actively shaping the emergent community along these pre-existing lines. As with the workers at Frank's Café and Campari Bar many involved with the existing institutional art system will find themselves working for extremely low wages, if not for free, yet when there is no possibility of remuneration why not use these energies to build something new. Many social alterantives that were posited alongside 'Food' in the 1970's have been partially realised amongst a young artistic community due to 'economic necessity': Communal living has become essential for far longer after leaving education and a barter economy of both goods and services is unavoidable for young artists and organisations. If these position were to become reorientated and politicised it might be possible to work towards a radical departure from the disempowering individualism of the current system.

 

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1 http://www.peckhampavilion.com/hannahbarry.html [28] , accessed 19/2/2010, 23:04

2 ibid

3 Freud, Sigmund, Autobiography, W.W. Norton & company, inc., 1935, p93

4 Here individual and young are interchangeable as the word individual as both noun and adjective are applicable.

5 http://www.metamute.org/en/content/crisis_at_the_ica_ekow_eshun_s_experiment_in_deinstitutionalisation.htm [29] accessed 21/3/10 21.49

6 ibid

7 http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/33192/london-calling/ [30] accessed 19/2/2010 20:32

8 The nature of exhibitions as social events can be seen in the status of the private view itself. The number of visitors on a private view night, whose name itself taps into the language of privilege in a consumer individualism, will far out weigh visitor numbers in the days the exhibition is open.

9 http://www.t5m.com/brigitte-istim/new-york-venice-peckham-its-the-hannah-barry-gallery.html [31] Accessed 5/4/2010 19:07

10 http://www.peckhamvision.org/wiki/Hannah_Barry_Gallery [32] Accessed 19/2/2010 20:36

11 http://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/about/the-british-council-and-the-venice-biennale [33] Accessed 5/4/2010 20.1

12 http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2009-08-27/hannah-barry-hails-from-peckham/ [34] Accessed 19/2/2010 20:53

13 http://www.nouse.co.uk/2010/01/26/hannah-barry-about-her-contemporary-art-gallery/ [35] accessed 29/4/2010 19.16

14 http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/33192/london-calling/ [30] accessed 19/2/2010 20:32

15 http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2009-08-27/hannah-barry-hails-from-peckham/ [34] Accessed 19/2/2010 20:53

16 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jul/05/art-goldsmiths [36] accessed 21/4/2010 2:00

17 http://www.southlondongallery.org/docs/info/history.html [37] accessed 21/4/2010 2:11

18 http://www.peckhampavilion.com/hannahbarry.html [28] accessed 19/2/2010, 23:04

19 This was true according to the list of artists at http://www.hannahbarry.com/artist.php [38] as of 21/4/2010. It is also worth noting that this single woman, Manon Awst, is represented in collaboration with a male artist.

20 http://www.t5m.com/brigitte-istim/new-york-venice-peckham-its-the-hannah-barry-gallery.html [31] Accessed 5/4/2010 19:07

21 http://www.nouse.co.uk/2010/01/26/hannah-barry-about-her-contemporary-art-gallery/ [35] Accessed 28/4/10 14.32

22 http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2009-08-27/hannah-barry-hails-from-peckham/ [34] Accessed 19/2/2010 20:53

23 http://www.peckhamvision.org/wiki/Hannah_Barry_Gallery [32] Accessed 29/4/2010 01.41

24 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jul/05/art-goldsmiths [36] accessed 21/4/2010 2:00

25 http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/33192/london-calling/ [30] accessed 19/2/2010 20:32

26 http://www.nouse.co.uk/2010/01/26/hannah-barry-about-her-contemporary-art-gallery/ [35] accessed 29/4/2010 19.16

27 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/25/restaurant-review-franks-cafe-campari-bar [39] accessed 29/4/2010 20.04