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Brixton Art Gallery 1983-86: An Illustrated History by Andrew Hurman is now on sale.
A4, full colour, 110 pages £30 (discounts for any artists who exhibited in the Gallery during this time). Contact [email protected] to order a copy.
Introduction
From June 1983 to March 1988, Brixton Art Gallery occupied three interlinked railway arches at 19-21 Atlantic Road, in the middle of Brixton’s busy shopping area.
The Gallery was run entirely by artists working voluntarily as part of the Brixton Artists Collective, a limited company and registered charity. Direct funding came from Lambeth Council and the GLC with indirect support, in the form of a heavily discounted rent, from the British Rail Property Board.
All decisions concerning the running of the Gallery – from practical matters of maintenance, through to the selection of the exhibition programme – were made at open meetings of the Collective where any artist could attend and speak, and directly influence the running of the Gallery.
The result was a series of exciting and entertaining exhibitions ranging from three-person shows through to the annual Members Show, where around 200 artists exhibited, filling every inch of the 300 ft of wall space and 3,000 sq ft of floor space.
This website holds an archive asssembled during the time of my involvement with the Gallery which roughly covered the first two-and-a-half years when almost 1,000 artists showed their work in the first 50 shows.
Welcome to Brixton Art Gallery.
Andrew Hurman – June 2008.
All the essays and intros to the exhibitions were written by me, unless otherwise stated.
A quick tour round the Gallery taken during the Third World Within exhibition: