And John Currin’s early Breck-girl portraits left me lost in the space between sincerity and irony as assuredly as Poe suspended a character over a pit with a razor-bladed pendulum overhead. When I first saw Noland’s cutout aluminum sculptures silk-screened with images, I didn’t even see them as art. Over the years, many artists had early showings here, including Barry Le Va, Kiki Smith, William Wegman, Sonic Youth, Jack Goldstein, David Wojnarowicz, Felix González-Torres, Andres Serrano, Cady Noland, John Currin, Glenn Ligon, and others. White Columns has changed my life a half-dozen times at the very least, and kept me on my toes for decades. Scary might be a better word, or depressing. It’s hard to imagine the last almost-half-century of art life here without it. Established in 1970 as an experimental platform for artists in Soho and known then as 112 Workshop or 112 Greene Street, White Columns is New York’s oldest continually run alternative exhibition space. Thankfully, alternative spaces like the Swiss Institute, the Kitchen, Artists Space, and others are all in great shape and going strong. Both in times when there’s no money and times like these, when the art world can seem awash in it, alternative spaces are more important than ever. Because, while commercial galleries are amazing places for artists - vehicles where art goes into the world, money comes back into the art world, and crucial conversations are commenced - these days, with rents so high and the stakes so great, galleries - as important as they are - have to be more for commerce and the support of artists already in the system, and less about constant iffy experimentation and risk-taking. That, and a place where artists live but aren’t featured as much as they might be. True Faith, co-curated by Matthew Higgs, opens on 30 June at Manchester Art Gallery as part of the Manchester International Festival.Without the constant incursion of new art, odd ideas, and indigenous talent - the necessary lifeblood of alternative and artist-run spaces in New York - our fair metropolis might only be the undisputed trading floor for the art world. Looking at this picture today, I feel so lucky to have grown up at that time the barriers put up around bands today simply weren’t there then. As Kevin wrote when he signed my copy of his book, Joy Division: “We were there.”įor me, these encounters with them laid the foundation for everything in my life: without this exposure to culture, I almost certainly wouldn’t have gone to art school or become a curator. For me, it’s nice to have photographic evidence of our presence. Kevin understood this: by photographing them in this old Victorian building, like something out of a Lowry painting, he showed the tension between the past, present and future. They influenced so much of what was to come: it’s hard to imagine club culture, dance music, acid house, without them and New Order. Seeing them live was a communal and transformative experience. They were wildly original, like nothing else you’d ever heard. They were about to change the course of popular music. This series of photographs, by Kevin Cummins, are the most iconic taken of Joy Division. We saw the Fall, and Mick Hucknall with his first band, Frantic Elevators, and Joy Division (here, I’m sat at the back on the right, looking straight ahead). It was an industrial building with no lift the more successful the band, the lower down they played. We also went to TJ Davidson’s, where all the great bands rehearsed. The addresses of our favourite labels were on the backs of their LPs, so we’d go and find the buildings at weekend, they were always shut, but we didn’t care. My friends and I used to go into Manchester at weekends. The fanzine was a way to get closer to them, and articulate my feelings about this music I loved. I was a few years too young for punk, but fascinated by what followed, particularly bands from the north, where I lived: the Fall, Human League and Joy Division. It was photocopied and stapled together, and all written by me to begin with. I n late 1978, when I was 13, I started a fanzine called Photophobia, about the independent music scene.
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