contemporary monkey

It’s no wonder art galleries are going out of business during the credit crunch.  I just hope artists are rigorous in their representation awareness to know that, possibly the reason they might be starving artists is because the profligate galleries are busy sleeping or drilling holes in the wall.

This past week, on my most recent effort to find new art in London galleries, I took a chance at visiting a gallery that claimed to be open.  It was sort of a return to a busted moment I had with the same gallery last Autumn.  At the time, I had made a visit to Lazarides Gallery, on Greek Street, only to find it temporarily closed.  It was difficult to tell it was closed because the address it was supposed to be at, didn’t even have a sign out front that said Lazarides Gallery, let alone one that might say, oh, something like, “Out to lunch, back in a few days”.

At the time I brushed it off because I had other galleries to visit.  On this last trip however, I decided to give the Lazarides Gallery another go.  I discovered through their web site that the Greek Street location had re-opened as their print shop, and a newer gallery for original art was only a five minute walk away, on the other side of Oxford Street at Rathbone Place.  Last Friday, at about noon, I found the Rathbone shop easily enough, as the marketing department somehow worked out a way to make a sign that says, “Lazarides Gallery”.  According to their web site, the gallery opens at 11am most days, and certainly Fridays.  I tried the door without any luck, and there wasn’t the usual intercom buzzer that galleries sometimes use to keep out people like me…people who might actually buy something from them.  The only objects I could see through the steel fence in front of the window, was a man with his head wedged into the wall.  I remembered an artist who had made sculpture like this, but then it occurred to me that maybe it was the gallery owner who had been viciously beaten into the building walls for not paying rent on time.

The Lazarides Gallery on Rathbone Place is pretty much of a non-entity in my book because they don’t know how to run a business.  As I was in the neighborhood, however, I plowed my way toward the old Greek Street location across a busy Oxford Street, where conceivably people who buy art might, in fact, be strolling by Lazarides’ Rathbone Place Gallery.  Good news for me as the Greek Street print shop was open and two fresh-faced, young men welcomed me.  One had a drill in his hand, and after welcoming me, apologized for the soon to be grinding wood demolition noise.  Despite all this Lazarides-inspired destruction and mayhem, I had a peek at some of their prints.  Between intermittent bit-plunging into the wall, the two guys were helpful and nice.  As for the art, not including the Banksy pieces, most of the prints seemed well-priced for those that are interested in owning art, but don’t have the fortune of deciding whether to buy an original art piece, or a car.  I particularly liked some of Conor Harrington’s prints, where he combines both oil and spray to composite fine art with graffiti.  Anyone who sprays paint over fine art has great potential to be one of my art heroes.

Artist: Conor Harrington

That’s what you get mostly in the Lazarides Print Shop: graffiti, which I like a lot.   It’s about the only art that the average person walking down the street can enjoy, without having to visit a major art institution, or heaven forbid, stumbling upon a gallery that’s open when it says it’s open.