“Before
every great fortune there is a crime.” Balzac.
Press Release for ‘Cinderella’
At the opening of Ready Steady Go we met a smartly dressed
lady who seemed to be enjoying the show. Her name was Maddy Carragher one
of the Directors from Workspace Group Plc. and casually mentioned in conversation
that ‘she’ (Workspace) had another “beautiful space”
available near Tower Bridge. It was like music to our ears and within days
we had arranged to meet the site manager for the Tower Bridge Business Complex.
Her name was Hilary Best who coincidentally was a Fine Art graduate and
took great interest in our proposal.
This building in Bermondsey once used to be a biscuit factory and now housed
an assortment of businesses, but two large units in the fifth floor, were
empty at the time.
Unit A501, in itself split into two sections was as Maddy had described
a “beautiful” space resembling a ballroom. Unit A502 also split
into two rooms, was a smaller, colder and more desolate place.
The difference between the two Units was such that they resembled opposite
sides of a coin. As you walked from one unit to the other through an interconnecting
bridge it felt like walking through a story unfolding much like in the movie
‘Carrie’ where a fairytale suddenly turns to horror.
We were fortunate enough to be granted use of both units which we ‘nicknamed’,
‘Il Palazzo’ and ‘The Ballroom’ (Unit A501) and
‘The Scullery’ (Unit A502), where we showed the work of forty
two artists.
TRAILER we had had the opportunity to rent one of the units we had used
in order to have a permanent gallery space, but instinctively this never
felt right.
Now on our seventh show, it felt like being a long way from home, at times
frightening and at times fun. It had not become ‘easier’ to
continue, but it had becoming more rewarding. And ultimately TRAILER’s
momentum had been maintained by the artists who had come on board.