The notion of “something for the weekend?” assumed a less risqué dimension at the former Mario’s Barber Shop on Chiltern Street in London’s Marylebone. Tea and biscuits were the only things dispensed at the Sunday afternoon opening of the shop’s new incarnation as James Brett’s The Gallery of Everything. This emporium of outsider art describes itself as “London’s first commercial gallery dedicated to non-academic artists and private art makers”.
Also presiding over the yesterday’s (25 September) unveiling was the art-loving musician Jarvis Cocker. The gallery’s first show was devoted to many of the artists featured in his seminal 1998 Channel 4 TV series, Journeys into the Outside.
It was something of a strange memory lane for Mr Cocker. A number of the artists he interviewed in the TV show, which is screening in the gallery basement, are no longer with us. He also ruefully confided to your correspondent that he doesn't actually own any of the works in the show. “I just love to look at them,” he declared, although as a number are up for sale, perhaps he should treat himself.
But while there were a number of Cocker fans in evidence, everyone agreed that the true star of the afternoon was Andrew E. Bruce, butler extraordinaire—and page to the royal household, no less—who put us more mature visitors into Proustian overdrive with his graceful dispensing of platters of classic 1970s Rich Tea biscuits, along with strong brews from the tea urn. Apparently this paragon of courtesy and service will be in intermittent attendance to gallery visitors throughout the exhibition’s two-month run. So something for the weekend, and, indeed, the weekdays too…