|
|
 |
| |
Hostility and indifference sealed fate of park gallery
• FOR just over 15 months, six days a week, gallery:space in Finsbury Park opened its doors to the public.
More than 10,000 visited the gallery in that period and enjoyed our programme of free exhibitions, projects, events and educational activities. This Sunday, we will be shutting the doors of the gallery, probably for the last time.
I opened gallery:space in late April last year. It is the only public art provision in the Finsbury Park area, covering parts of Islington, Haringey and Hackney and home to some of London’s poorest communities. My aim was to create a space for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to enjoy high-quality art, to deliver a programme of free exhibitions and educational activities and to enable local people to take part in the arts as exhibitors, participants and audiences.
No one else was providing these services at the time and, as far as I’m aware, no one will be from now on.
I knew I would have to invest my own money in order to deliver this ambitious plan but assumed I would soon convince Haringey Council, which manages Finsbury Park, of the project’s benefits to the community and the regeneration of the area.
I have since invested thousands of pounds, digging deep into my overdraft. Unfortunately, they never got it. (Admittedly they let me use the building – the old, derelict toilet block – free of charge.)
During the last 15 months, and with the great help of an amazing team of volunteers I developed and produced 10 public exhibitions.
There have been solo and group shows featuring local and international artists working across media. We’ve had drawings from Pakistan, photographs from Sierra Leone, environmental art from Surrey and video work from Israel as well as many north London artists. We showed the first retrospective of the important Caribbean Artists Movement, co-curated by a Colombian artist, Jakeline Londono.
We supported and encouraged emergent talents and were extremely proud when one of our artists, Noa Lidor, was recently commissioned by Tate Modern.
We also achieved many educational targets. Many of you attended our free talks and events and took part in our informal gallery educational activities. Our work has been recognised by Engage, the national gallery education trust, and we were twice funded to deliver educational projects with a local school.
However, over time we learnt that, apart from the council’s indifference, the gallery’s main threat comes from, curiously, a small local organisation, the Friends of Finsbury Park. To be honest, I am still unsure what triggered their hostility. We clearly share the same aims and, so I assumed, the same values. Sadly, a few of the trustees of the Friends of Finsbury Park, without consulting their members, decided to do whatever possible in order to close the gallery.
They never explained why. In a strange move last month the trustees changed the constitution days before a public meeting about the gallery, allowing them to expel me (a paid member) from the organisation.
Haringey officers, “consulting” only the Friends of Finsbury Park, despite their known hostility, decided the gallery must go. They also never really explained why. So gallery:space might be no more.
Your hundreds of signatures and many letters have been ignored. Your voice is meaningless to a council that’s meant to work for you. And your opinion is irrelevant to the community organisation that’s meant to represent you.
We will probably be gone by next week, but in the meanwhile we want to celebrate our achievements, and yours. Join us for a last event at gallery:space – an open picnic for all our friends and supporters at 6pm on Sunday.
Bring your mates and family, bring your food and drink, and enjoy free, independent art in Finsbury Park among friends, probably for the last time. Hoping to see you there.
SHIRI SHALMY
Director, gallery:space, Finsbury Park
|
 |
|
| |
| Your Comments : |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
