Join me for my weekly blog to follow the Bigger Picture team as they open the Bigger Picture Gallery in Crystal Palace. In a year the team have gone from pop up to forming a community interest company to put Crystal Palace on the map as a cultural destination.
Bigger Picture Project
The Art Gallery
2A Anerley Hill
Crystal Palace
SE19 2AA
(previously the Mercedes showroom next to the Grape & Grain)
Email: info@biggerpicturegallery.co.uk
w.w.w.biggerpicturegallery.co.uk
PRE PRESS GOSSIP! Just between you and me I can leak that the renowned artist Guy Beggs (who has paintings in Tate Britain and the Museum of London amongst others…) is to officially open the Gallery with a month long solo exhibition in April. Keep reading regularly to find out more…..
Let me give you a little bit of background about the team, who are: Roy, Angel, Paul, Vienna and Huw; my friends!
Introducing Angel (and a little bit about me)
As a teenager I dreamed of being a struggling art student in Paris, tucked away in an attic with a pull out bed and a cupboard that housed a small but perfect formed kitchenette, long hot summers spent submerged in poppy fields, painting long into the evening and living off a staple diet of crusty bread, brie and absinth. Then I realised that not speaking French may be a draw back to the plan, developed hay fever, I couldn’t eat cheese without Branston pickle (a ‘guillotine’ offensive in France)
I definitely couldn’t stomach the taste or smell for absinth, despite repeated efforts, let alone paint a picture. All things considered I decided to go with plan B, a life of power dressing, laptops and a daily ritual of being cramped into a tin can of a train like a baby veal calf every day for a life in the Big City putting behind me any dreams of living life in a creative hot bed.
And then an ANGEL appeared on the door step like a little bedraggled puppy……
Day 1: Hanging the art: Roy admires the space whist it’s all a bit too much for Angel, who collapses from exhaustion.
One spring morning last year ROY my dog walking chum and the maker of the best chocolate brownies I have ever tasted (proving that the Americans do have a cuisine to offer the English) and an artist was bouncing around Crystal Palace park full of the concept of ‘ POP UP .
Who can resist Roy’s boundless energy and in a moment of over excitement and intoxication from the spring flowers on a cold spring morning we decided to do a pop up restaurant night and turn the house into a gallery to show case the work of Angel and Roy. This was to be start of the POP UP inspired art movement that was to take grip in our community.
After I got home and sobered up from the excitement of pop ups, I was full of fear: who would any one come, let alone pay to eat, drink and want to view the ‘in house gallery’? I shouldn’t have worries as the interest in our pop up/ pop art restaurant was incredible. We were over subscribed; I guess that the people of Crystal Palace have a bohemia streak and embraced the fashionable concept sweeping it way over from New York to SE19. .
It was pop restaurant day at my house and PAUL was in full creative swing, up a ladder and armed with a small (toy?), but deadly hammer. Having worked in a previous life for Christies(may be it was gavel?), Paul knew a thing or two about positioning and hanging art and I knew that my new plastered walls were destined to bare scars in the name of art. My house looked came alive with a feast of colour.
The evening was a fabulous success but very hard work and I will never forgot Roy and HUW (my husband, the lawyer in a previous life and the best cook I know) slaving over a hot stove cooking in matching white t skirts and producing a gourmet five course meal for 16 paying guests whilst Angel and I put on our best little black dresses to attend to the table whilst our guests were treated to a visual feast of colourful art, food and unlimited wine.
Inspired by the local support for our pop our restaurant and interest in the paintings, Roy approached Croyden Council with a view to using a empty shop to set up a temporary gallery and so the Bigger Picture Group was formed and the beautiful little corner shop next to the Alama Pub on Church Road was painted and brought to life to house Crystal Palace’s first pop up shop. The shop has now been sold to a photographer proving that pop up really does have a place in promoting and supporting the community for regeneration.
Day 1: Huw, Roy & Paul admire the view (Is it Angel or Crystal Palaces very own Eiffel tower that is so interesting?)
So just before I go for this week….. The team are holding a summer exhibition this year so for all you artists please go to the website and sign up and tell all your friends. There are prizes as well as the opportunity for you to sell your work… I am off to dust down my old canvas and dig out my old paint a brush, who needs Paris for inspiration when I have my very own Eiffel tower here in Crystal Palace.
