Just over Primrose Hill bridge, nuzzling right up to the Little One coffee shop, is the imposing former Chalk Farm Garage building.
More recently home to Bibendum’s HQ, it’s recently reopened as the Freelands Foundation, a light-filled gallery aiming to help artists reach a wider audience.
A registered charity, it hopes to support both creatives and cultural institutions, helping educate young people with programmes, activities, exhibitions and awards.
The other lunchtime we popped by to check out new exhibition Repeat Repeat, curated by creative director Henry Ward. It profiles seven artists (some who don’t even consider themselves as such) who have consciously undertaken repetitive tasks to demonstrate “the underlying profundity of routine”, and how it can take on a deeper meaning.
So while in one corner Ben Borthwick (a curator and writer) has programmed a flatscreen with the same view of Plymouth he takes every morning, elsewhere the rather more famous Susan Hiller (who sadly died last week) tracks her own pregnancy over ten lunar months back in the late 1970s.
Directly opposite, Joseph Cartwright’s Starlight Café celebrates a Roman Road caff whose condiments he snapped daily waiting for his kids to finish school. And I especially liked Andee Collard’s multiple drawings of a ball of string, undertaken every day for four years with surprising results.
With photography, drawing, painting and sculpture all in evidence, you might just leave with a fresh perspective on the quiet power of repetition – and its relation to the daily drudge.
Main image: Hydar Dewachi28
