Farsight Gallery to present a review of the artistic output of Anne Pigalle ‘The Queen of Soho’. The exhibition will feature paintings, film, performance and painted clothes.
The show reminds us that Soho was always the place to be to seek art, music, fun and freedom, ever since 40000 French Huguenots fled for their lives from France to the UK and settled between Spitalfields and Soho, bringing along with them the indelible sense of Bohemia and the Pigalle in Paris, famous for the birth of Cabaret and everything that makes life worth living.
Miss Pigalle is renowned as a singer, having worked with the likes of Michael Nyman and Trevor Horn in the UK, Leonard Cohen’s band and John Lee Hooker’s musicians in America. She started the famous Wednesday nights at the Café de Paris and created parties at nearly every venue in Soho since, including reopening the music nights at Madame Jojo’s while creating an innovating mix of cabaret and transgender style way back then – and inspiring a well-known photographer to name her ‘Queen of Soho’.
Her working relationship with Donald Cammell (Performance) was a catalyst for the ‘The Soho Connection’; which eventually became a four-hour film featuring 50+ interviews with a myriad of Soho characters.
Her mysterious punk past as a guitarist in Paris has yet to be exposed, and she witnessed both French and English chapters of the first Punk wave first hand. With a father who played hot club jazz with the gypsies and Sydney Bechet in Paris, and a grandmother who was friends with Jean Cocteau, Anne’s upbringing in Montmartre led inevitably to life in Soho.
Since 2000, Pigalle has been creating and refining a highly diversified output of visual art. From her erotic self-portrait Polaroids exhibited at the prestigious Michael Hoppen Gallery, to the more naive paintwork reminiscent of Matisse, Toulouse Lautrec, Degas, Basquiat and Picasso that she exhibited along with Jaimie Reid and Jimmy Cauty at the Aquarium Gallery, Pigalle is now a force to be reckoned with.
Her later recordings ‘Madame Sex’, ‘Ecstase’ and ‘The Deal’ are the eclectic soundtracks to the visual work on show. The complete story of her life and art cannot be fully imitated or exposed here, but for now, please come, share and enjoy yourselves with us.
ANNE PIGALLE ‘THE SOHO CONNECTION’ May 29th – June 11th 2024, Farsight Gallery
Private View – Wednesday 29th May 6PM – 9PM RSVP contact@farsightcollective.com
Anne Pigalle interviewed by Chris Salewicz Thursday 6th June, 7pm RSVP contact@farsightcollective.com
