We want to celebrate and find out more about the characters driving the renaissance of the London gallery scene, and what better way than to resurrect THAT’s Interesting.
Last time we had Ema O’Donovan from Xxijra Hii this time we have gallerist Alex Harrison.
Alex Harrison co-founded Public Gallery with Harry Dougall in 2020. Located in a brutalist estate in London’s East End, the gallery has a diverse international programme focused on supporting emerging practices.
Some Art I’m interested in
Outside of Public’s programme, I’ve long been fascinated by P. Staff’s work. It gives me such a strong feeling of being an outsider, being alienated and alone, like wandering into places you’re not meant or allowed to be in. Their exhibition at Serpentine in 2019 was unforgettable. Another artist I can’t stop thinking about is Arisa Yoshioka, her work is so tender and full of heartache and joy.
Some Design I’m interested in
My all-time favourite work of architecture / interior design is La Fabrica, the home and office of Ricardo Bofill up until his recent passing in 2022. He bought the abandoned 31,000 sq ft cement factory in 1973 and over several decades transformed it into the most amazing living and working space, combining brutalist lines with expansive volumes and elongated De Chirico style arches, all draped in lush greenery. It’s not open to the public but I do dream of being able to visit one day.
Some Culture I’m interested in
Coming from a design background I’m always studying visual trends and how they tie in to specific cultural moments and periods of time. Aesthetics Wiki is trying to create a compendium of all these micro and macro movements and despite most of them going by pretty much unnoticed at the time, their commonalities become so obvious when grouped together and kind of feel like a visual representation of the spirit and collective mindset of the particular groups involved at the time. It’s also interesting to notice various aesthetic trends resurfacing today and consider why they have become appealing once again.
Some Tech I’m interested in
It’s not really tech but the past few months I’ve been watching a lot of visualisations of space phenomena, like ‘what would it look like if you travelled through a wormhole‘ or ‘what would you see from the window of a spaceship travelling faster than light’. I hope we will develop the technology to start properly exploring the universe during my lifetime – the scale and weirdness of it is so mind blowing.
Some Style / Fashion I’m interested in
I might be showing my age here but I am obsessed with the long-running trend for ugly clothing and shoes. It’s like a morbid fascination, I have a folder of hundreds of saved images of the most insane examples. It’s also interesting to see how brands at the forefront of this, like Balenciaga et al, have such a pervasive influence on the art world with many young galleries emulating that gothic / cyberpunk / Matrix noughties era vibe.
A museum and gallery show recommendation
One of our artists Steph Huang has an upcoming exhibition at Tate Britain as part of their ‘Art Now’ program which opens 12th July. Her new exhibition will follow the traces of maritime trade in our everyday lives which connect to larger histories, ecosystems and our at times unhealthy relationship to food consumption.
For the next in the series I’m nominating Camille Houzé from Nicoletti. We love their program and over the years Oswaldo and Camille have been good friends to us and can always be relied on to throw the best parties. Look out for their brand new space opening later this year
