Jarvis Cocker, the British musician who famously sang about studying sculpture at Central Saint Martins college of art, is to collaborate on the inaugural exhibition at The Gallery of Everything—the UK’s first commercial gallery dedicated to self-taught artists. Its aim, according to a statement, is to “communicate an alternative history of art”.
All proceeds raised from sales at the gallery, due to open in a former barber shop in Marylebone on 25 September, will go towards the non-profit activities of The Museum of Everything. The institution, dedicated to the exhibition and advancement of private and non-academic artists, was established in north London in 2009.
“As The Museum of Everything continues its mission around the globe, The Gallery of Everything will be its home for collectors and museums, secret makers and do-ers, and for private art made public,” says the museum's founder James Brett.
The first exhibition at the gallery takes its name from—and features artists made famous by—Cocker’s 1998 Channel 4 documentary about non-academic art, Journeys into the Outside. They include Howard Finster, whose work was picked up by the US rock band Talking Heads (prices range from £3,000 to £30,000), and the self-appointed visionary St EOM (his art is not for sale). The rarely shown TV series will also be screened as part of the show (until 20 November). Cocker, meanwhile, is due to take part in several discussions at the gallery.
The gallery will also participate in Frieze Masters this year (6-9 October), showing works by artists discovered by Jean Dubuffet and displayed in his experimental Parisian salon in 1947, Le Foyer de l’Art Brut. They include the portraitist Aloïse Corbaz; Juva, a lapsed nobleman and academic who obsessively collected flint stones; and several volcanic stone carvings named after the Swiss collector Josef Müller, known only as Les Barbus Müller. Many of the works have never been on the market before.
