Lungley Gallery – Maya Balcioglu

Born in Istanbul in 1955, she ar­rived in Lon­don in 1977. Studied at Brighton (be­cause it was by the sea) graduating in 1982 and the Slade School of Fine Art, Lon­don, graduating in 1984 supporting her own ed­u­ca­tion by work­ing in fac­to­ries, night shifts and cater­ing jobs. She col­lab­o­rated with Stu­art Bris­ley on The Ceno­taph Pro­ject (1987-1991) and edited the pub­li­ca­tion for this pro­ject.  De­cided to mir­ror a busi­ness and set up a shop as an ex­per­i­men­tal space and a pro­posal to test ideas in pub­lic with an im­me­di­ate and un­am­bigu­ous risk el­e­ment. This space was es­tab­lished within the com­mer­cial par­a­digm, fail­ure was real and meant se­ri­ous losses. It had a core iden­tity es­tab­lished by pre­sent­ing cer­tain ‘goods’, other than that it had no am­bi­tions as a busi­ness and its pur­pose was kept de­lib­er­ately un­clear. The flex­i­bil­ity of the spec­u­la­tion proved to be a light footed suc­cess. The “shop” was voted as one of the best 50 in the world. At the height of its suc­cess the busi­ness was no longer rel­e­vant. It be­came a model for oth­ers to fol­low, and there­fore was closed.  Maya Bal­cioglu is part of the cu­ra­to­r­ial team of the Mu­seum of Or­dure.