The Photographers' Gallery cafe

[imomus]

On Thursday, running around London before catching my flight back to Berlin, I went into the Photographers' Gallery at 5 Great Newport Street in Covent Garden.



The Photographers' Gallery cafe is one of my favourite London locations, a place I've used for years as a kind of home-from-home, an office, a meeting-place. But Thursday's visit will be my last; in December the Photographers' Gallery re-locates to 16 Ramilies Street, just south of Oxford Street in Soho.



In 2011, the Photographers' Gallery will move into this new custom building on Ramilies Street. It looks big and smart, and the location's good, and I'm happy for them. But I can't help getting a bit nostalgic about the Covent Garden space. There's just something about it.



It's quite unusual, the product of space restraints: a gallery and a cafe mixed together, a sky-lit white room with a long communal wooden table running down the middle. While one group of people chatters away, drinking coffee and eating cake in the centre of the room, others drift around the walls, looking at the photographs in a constantly-changing series of exhibitions.



In the corridor that leads to the cafe they're currently displaying a nostalgia-inducing series of posters for shows at the Photographers' Gallery, mostly in the 1980s.



I must've seen almost all these shows between 1984 and 1994, when I lived in London, and then the shows between 1997 and 2000, when I came back after two years in Paris.



The Photographers' Gallery cafe is a place I'd take girls. Here I am in the cafe in May 1999 with my then-girlfriend.



The same man has run the Photographers' Gallery cafe for as long as I can remember. Come rain, come hail, day in, day out, he's there, with the same stock, and the same stock phrases. ("A cup, or a mug for your tea? There's a glass there for the bag when you're done.") I don't chat to him, but he reassures me. Something about him makes me think he collects records on the 4AD label. I always get the same thing when I'm there: a slice of seed cake and a mug of Lapsang Souchong tea with milk in it. I don't drink Twinings Lapsang (and certainly not with milk) anywhere else these days, so that smokey aroma will always remind me of this skylit room, and reading the Guardian, probably while waiting for a Japanese girl or a journalist to turn up (I'd often do interviews in the cafe).



I also associate the Photographers' Gallery cafe with my friend Thomi Wroblewski, graphic designer and photographer. We'd often sit here, taking a break from some tramp through Soho and Covent Garden. Thomi, much more sociable than me, would strike up conversations with strangers. You could do that at the long communal table.



One stranger I did strike up a conversation with in this room was Ivor Cutler. Like me, he used to come here and sit on his own, writing and reading. My opening line was "Mr Cutler, I'm a great fan of your work, and I believe we've shared a record label, Creation Records."

"A record label, is that what it was?" Cutler replied, before opening his wallet to give me some of the stickers he always carried around with him. They had strange phrases printed on them, but I can't remember what mine said now.

I think it's apt that I remember the Photographers' Gallery mainly as a place for drinking tea and being sociable: before it opened in 1971, the site of the Photographers Gallery was a Lyons Tea Bar.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I used the Photographer's Gallery in much the same way as you, throughuot the eighties when I lived in London - as a sort of anchorage point in Covent Garden, when I wanted to sit down and read the paper over a coffee. I too saw all those eighties shows. There weren't too many places like that back then. I had a string of them in various bits of London where I would always sit down if in the vicinity - the Photographer's Gallery, the ICA, etc. There were a lot less non-pub places to sit down in back then, and museum/gallery cafés played a much more important role (to me, anyway).

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

The white-washed walls, the minimalist furniture, the clinical sterility -- it's all a bit 'art crowd in the city'. I know that space is at a premium and decor costs but I don't understand why places that are supposed to entice the creative class all too often have about as much creative spirit as a hospital waiting room.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Hhhmm, delicious cake.

[steviecat.livejournal.com]

How cheering to see Mr. Cutler. I usually pop into The Photographers' Gallery on my way through London around Xmas. Occasionaly pick up something interesting in the shop. Think I discovered it by chance back in the 'eighties on a record-buying trip. Went to see the Larry Clark show there, but generally I just see whatever happens to be on, like the Walker Evans.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the communal table and cafe come in useful from a social point of view, but it's not a place I'd describe as cosy or comfortable. Harsh lighting, white walls, hard wooden furniture etc. may work for galleries, but don't exactly give the place any personal or welcoming feel. I don't think I'd ever be able to get sentimental about it, a least from an aesthetic standpoint.

[realrealgone.livejournal.com]

delightful to see Mr Cutler again, looking much as he always did meeting strangers (i.e. rather startled!). I was never sure whether the things he said in such circumstances were heartfelt naivite or scathing sarcasm, such was the level of his awkward manneredness. Sounds like he was the same with you too!

The Photographer's Gallery sounds a great place - I've never been... but will make a beeline to the new location the next time I'm in the area. I hope the table/cake arrangement remains.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm strange, but I've never found cluttered, chintzy, dark interiors "soothing" or "reassuring". A white-walled, evenly-lit space with a simple form factor puts me at ease. I like how it brings the focus to the people in the room, giving them the status of works of art. I like what it does to colour. I like how there's no traffic noise in there, no radio.

[(Anonymous)]

The café is also a gallery: why would you want to decorate it? It's got art on the walls already. The "art crowd" is made up of gallery staff, artists, students, schoolkids who are there to see the art, curious passersby of all sorts and generally people who appreciate its cheap, decent food, general air of civility and the chance to look at the work at their leisure. I hope the café in the new gallery doesn't try hard to "entice the creative class" either: I can think of nothing more annoying in a public space.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"The café is also a gallery: why would you want to decorate it?"

You say that like the need for stark minimalism is self-evident; that galleries should conform to some kind of objective standard deemed suitable for the appreciation of art. On the contrary, art has been showcased for thousands of years in many different settings, so why settle for the late 20th century western model that's been done to death and become extremely hackneyed?

"I hope the café in the new gallery doesn't try hard to "entice the creative class" either"

too late - stark minimalist decor is to artists what 'international hotel' decor is to the rich.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm going to write a disgusted letter to the Daily Mail about this. It's the aesthetic of the hospital ward, the boiler room and the toilet, rather than the Royal Geographical Society's Members Lounge.

It's high time artists lived amongst flock wallpaper and clutter like the rest of us! If we don't make a stand now, Britain will be full-blown Modernist before long. And then what would have been the point of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain?

hello

[(Anonymous)]

he give me a sticker around the same time tit just said.....funny smell on it
i put in on my bongos......am in london next i shall be going to that spot for some lonely tea and writing and writing mostly looking
when you back in glasgow am putting to gether an ivor tribute would you like to contribute...am sorry i havent been in touch but life has been hideousand awful,,,,,,,any time i think of ivor its like strong strong happy medincesin

Re: hello

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hello... er, not quite sure who you are?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Dear Mr. Currie,

As a champion of bland, Bourgeoisie values and an unfaltering supporter of cultural mediocrity, we're saddened to hear of your disdain for contemporary minimalism. Don't be such a dinosaur! As you can see by our vast array of articles on highstreet fashion, celebrity beauty secrets and interior design, we know style.

Just look at our latest selection of chic bathroom designs:


To help change your mind, we've included tickets for you and your family to visit the Southhampton's City Art gallery. The magnificent City Art Gallery has over 3,500 works of art covering six centuries of European culture from the Italian Renaissance to French Impressionism. Its core collection of 20th Century British art is internationally renowned. Already voted Fine Art Museum of the Year in 1994, the City Art Gallery was described in 2003 as one of the best place outside London to see British modern art and studio ceramics. What a treat!



You live in Berlin, one of hottest cities around -- Brad Pit and Angelina jolie moved there and everything, you have no excuse for being uncool.

Yours Sincerely,


The Daily Mail

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Dear Daily (may I call you that?),

I see you have truly changed your spots since advocating this sort of tat at the 1932 Ideal Home Exhibition:



What's more, it's clear that "he who doesn't read the Daily Mail is in danger of repeating it". Do you have a cheap international edition you could airmail to me here in Berlin daily, just so that I can hate whatever you're currently loving, and stay ahead of the curve, as artists ought to be at all times?

Thanks in advance,

An Artist in Berlin

[(Anonymous)]

what about dark by way of Tanizaki?

[(Anonymous)]

I'd forgotten they were moving, I'll miss the old place (or rather, places, it being a gallery of two halves of course) too. The new home looks way too corporate and White Cubey.

Miles

[lecabinet.livejournal.com]

I think it's the acoustics in there that make it so nice to be in. I wandered in there in May and we did stay for a cup of tea. You can sit down or look at the photos, I liked it a lot.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder where the whole idea of a distinct and identifiable 'corporate' style came from... Have a few influential corporations always bought certain artists or employed certain architects and set the trend so to speak?

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

how do you jibe that with your interest in the "farm project" aesthetic and relational aesthetics in general?

http://imomus.livejournal.com/342498.html

[diesel-pioneer.livejournal.com]

chromophobe!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Is there any contradiction between a simple, self-deprecating white space bringing the focus to the people in the room and giving them the status of works of art, and relational aesthetics doing the exact same thing?

But yes, I also appreciate the Mike Meiré thing. Modernist minimalism is not scary, but neither is it the end of design history.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

When you think of a phrase like "6th Avenue Modernism" you see how the Bauhaus and the International Style links directly (at least in the mid-20th century) to corporate style and international capitalism.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

October 1999, Photographer's Gallery Café, 5 Great Newport Street, London. Note the chocolate donut and the Nokia Communicator.

John Davies

[bennycornelius.livejournal.com]

My fondest memory of interacting with the cafe space is when they were exhibiting the work of John Davies and I spent many an hour there with friends. The white minimalism discussed above clashed with his images of Britain's development disasters. Both were equally stark, but the sparseness of the room felt the perfect place to discuss the existence of the buildings and what this meant for people outside of what came to be understood by us all as "neutral ground".

I'm a huge fan of C.K. Williams, and I remember thinking of his line in "The Singing" about the importance of being "someone to rectify redo remake" and at that time feeling as though I was such a person; that when we left the space we would leave with a sense that what had been discussed was too precious not to be put into practice ... I've rarely felt so confident in defining both good and bad architecture.

[bokmala.livejournal.com]

Seems like it was a great café. Do you think there is there a Berlin equivalent? Should we start one?

[armoredbaby.livejournal.com]

I like the color and the richness of the last photo. His expression is terrific.