Friends With Benefits
Safe House One 28 – 30 July 2021
Verity Babbs 28/07/2021
Tucked behind Copeland Park and the Bussey Building is Safe House One – a gutted terrace house that’s a better fit for today’s generation of contemporary artists than any white cube space I’ve seen so far. The venue is dilapidated, but the original fireplaces and sections of vintage wallpaper that peep through make the space feel like living history .
The show came with a premise, rather than a theme: five artists – organised by Abi Hampsey – invited two other artists to join them in the room they had been assigned to curate. The result was a group show of artists who hadn’t necessarily been previously presented together, and a show that felt organic and fresh – away from the restraint of a theme which can often dampen the creative flair of a great line-up.
It’s widely accepted that a big part of ‘making it’ in any industry is your network. While this has traditionally taken the form of “my father’s a collector and that’s how I got this great internship”, this new wave networking of pulling up your comrades alongside you when an opportunity arises is properly uplifting. ‘Friends with Benefits’ is exactly the kind of artistic endeavour we need in an ever-more-corporate art world.
The line-up for the exhibition is wonderful and we shouldn’t take our eye off any of the exhibiting artists. Any art work that can hold its own when it’s not against a white background, and compete for and win our attention against deeply textured walls, is applaudable. That’s exactly what each piece in this show has done.
I was particularly struck by Ashleigh Fisk’s metal objects which were hung in the room curated by Sophie Goodchild. These pieces blurred the line between high class Objet d’art and decorative objects that may once have existed in Safe House One in its original domestic life. Hawazin Alotaibi’s video work in this room was also a highlight and it was wonderful to see how digital work was included in the show so seamlessly.
The way I navigated the space and viewed the works in it was much more free-form than in traditional gallery spaces. From the downstairs rooms curated by Louis Appleby and Lizzie Munn you can look diagonally upwards through the crumbling beams of the second floor, into the room curated by Hampsey. I’ve never seen work from this angle – it was exciting -and it unified the space and the exhibition. There aren’t specific routes we have to stick to when walking through domestic spaces: much like how you would travel through your own home, I went back and forth in this exhibition, returning to rooms and taking my time. White cube spaces can feel a bit like books; you read each thing in its turn, moving onwards mechanically through a specific structure. For some reason doing a U-turn in a white cube feels embarrassing. like you’ve failed an exam in ‘looking properly’ and have had to start again. I loved the choice of this complex-yet-unintimidating venue for this show.
Lockdown saw thousands of companies leave their offices not just for the pandemic, but for good. I hope for a future where those abandoned offices become spaces for art, culture, and community. ‘Friends with Benefits’ was like looking into that future – when spaces are reclaimed for Good. It felt like seeing a flower grow through the pavement; art has found a way.
