Aleph Contemporary – Joana Galego and Marcus Cope: Insider / Outsider

Exhibition at the In & Out (Naval and Military Club) 4 St James’s Square, St. James’s, London SW1Y 4JU – Booking Essential: events@theinandout.co.uk

‘You have made Art an outlet for the passions, a kind of chamber pot to catch the overflow of I don’t know what. It doesn’t smell good. It smells of hate!’ – Gustave Flaubert to his scorned lover Louise Colet.

Most innovation, most creative thoughts come from outsider moments, times when we feel ostracised or left out in the cold. Yet the dreams of getting together, of sparkling social intercourse, persist. We club together and we shut people out. It is the vicious circle of life. When we are in our exile we dream of that Bohemian lifestyle hovering, shimmering as a mirage on the horizon.

There is a fragmentary element to the world of both artists in this show: Marcus Cope and Joana Galego. It is possible to argue that one of many starting points for both of them is the work of the American R.B. Kitaj, who came to Europe as a GI in the middle of last century. Though older, he was a contemporary of David Hockney at the Royal College. He had a vision of a Bohemian café life, a constant flow of intellectual interchange. It was he who first coined the term School of London and was instrumental in helping promote the idea of London as a hub of living artists.