When all the building conversion works were completed in 1998, Edwina Orr founded and opened the “291 Gallery”. She named the gallery not only to reflect its actual address i.e. 291 Hackney Road, Shoreditch, London but also to pay homage to the original “291” set up by Alfred Stieglitz in 291 Fifth Avenue, New York in 1905.
Operating as a non-commercial, self-sustaining contemporary art gallery, Orr’s vision was to platform new and emerging artists alongside well-established practitioners. Its programme championed experimentation and interdisciplinary practice across painting, performance art, installations, film, music, dance and cabaret, while creating a social nucleus for conceptual engagement within diverse arts communities. Through this breadth of exhibitions and events, the gallery quickly became a respected cultural hub within London’s creative community.
Edwina Orr was the sole Director of the 291 Gallery, and with her in-house staff, Lisa Jensen, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Angeli Sagar, to name but a few, along with external satellite curators, she steered and curated a diverse and varied programme.
In the article "Simultanisme-librettisme" Appollinaire called for a positive and sustained exploration of the imagination where the new artistic spirit fights to open "new vistas into the exterior and interior universes which are not inferior to those which scientists in all fields discover every day and from which they extract endless marvels". This statement by Appollinaire is reflected in the 291 Gallery ethos which strived to dissolve, distort and disrupt the classic boundaries between Art, Science and Philosophy. The gallery programme always favoured the imagination rather than any particular media, style or cultural fashion.
The model was based on a financially self-sustaining, non-commercial Contemporary Art Gallery. Given the uncertainty of Arts Council funding at the time, the 291 Gallery had to be economically self-sufficient, and it was liberating not to be fettered by the Arts Council’s ever changing cultural policies and “guidelines”, however, it was a tough route. The costs of a large gallery space plus the substantial number of staff meant that revenue needed to be generated from the bar and the restaurant. Entry fees were kept as low as possible and mostly went to the artists. This financially independent model would allow Orr the freedom to select experimental art without the pressure to sell, commercialise or commoditise the artwork.
The gallery encouraged the right for artists to experiment, rehearse, test and reassess ideas and if necessary “fail”, without commercial pressure, which was truly liberating for many artists. Artistic practice often evolves through experimentation and revision. Yet the very processes that lead to meaningful work frequently involve uncertainty and collapse. Risk sits at the centre of this reframing. The 291 Gallery created the conditions in which risk is both possible and supported. This requires a shift in emphasis from outcome to process. A pedagogy that values risk must therefore recognise the importance of attempts that do not succeed in conventional terms.
Innovation often emerges from positions that appear uncertain or unresolved, it is therefore necessary to recognise that risk is not peripheral but central to artistic practice. 291 became a place of exploration and experimentation, like an extension of the artist’s studio, to enable artists, especially in Performance Art, theatrical and dance works, or evolving installations to test out ideas, repeat and hone the work and often with a live audience, to create a dynamic engagement between spectator and artist. It gained the gallery a reputation for showing and platforming new work and it attracted many artists
The 291 programme focused on experimental film, performance art, site specific Installations, painting, sculpture, multi-cultural music, sound art, dance, new technologies, spoken word, cabaret and much more.
The 291 Gallery emphasis on experimentation allowed theatrical organisations such as 19-27 Theatre and Anthony Hampton and Silvia Mercuriali’s Rotazaza to rehearse, test, experiment, develop and ultimately perform the final work at 291 Gallery, often with large audiences. “Autoteatro” is a term coined by Ant Hampton and Silvia Mercuriali for Rotozaza's 'Etiquette'. “In Autoteatro, audience members perform the piece themselves, for each other. Participants are given instruction via audio, visual cues or text for what to do or say. By simply following these instructions, an event begins to unfold. Functioning automatically: once started, there are no actors or other human involvment or labour during the work other than the participants engagement. An Autoteatro work exists as a fixed, often pre-recorded 'trigger' for a performance embodied only by those taking part. As well as sometimes allowing for Showing Without Going, being automated means it's usually possible to run the work on loop for large audiences over longer periods, and to multiply the number of simultaneous performances in different places. Having no audience beyond the participants themselves, creates a levelling of what would otherwise be unequal power dynamics: there's no director or rehearsed actor who knows how things 'should be going'; no-one sitting in the dark making judgements about those performing. You know that the other person or people are discovering everything with you. Sharing risk often allows us to take more risk”. Rotozaza’s work reflected the 291 Gallery ethos to create the conditions in which risk is both possible and supported where the shift in emphasis moves from outcome to process.
Flu-x was another example of a one-off site specific danse installation that filled the entire gallery space and was only possible through the 291 Gallery policy of encouraging experimentation. Flu-x explored fluctuating states of consciousness and the space and time perception within. The site specific danse installation was inspired by genetic science; It was created by Scenographer /Director Joanna Altherr and choreographer Claire Ross along with three outstanding award winning dancers, Matthew Hawkins, Yalchun Abdurehim and Andrea Herdeg.The dancers through their movements and interaction with large white elasticated materials, attached to key anchors in the building, created an environment reminiscent of physiological structures demarcating in real space where the dancers had left their trace. Enhanced through light, sound and video projections, the audience experienced itself as part of this organism and its thrilling transformation of space.
The first event that occurred at the 291 Gallery was White Cube’s (Jay Jopling) Screaming Men choir of Oulu, Finland (Mieskuoro Huutajat). The link shows them performing at MoMA, September 2008. The Screaming Men involved around 40 Finnish men chanting and screaming in unison along with playing huge tubular pipes extending some 4 metres across the floor, all performed in the large void of the new 291 gallery with its striking and memorable acoustics amplifying the sound of powerful male voices acting in unison. It was a sensation with a packed audience, and it generously helped to launch the new 291 Gallery into the artworld.
The 291 Gallery programme included the following events (just some examples of the multiple exhibitions held over ten years):
Graham Higgin, the author of Porcupines: A Philosophical Anthology written by Graham Higgins. Higgins curated the exhibition of the same name “Porcupines” where artists such as Martin Creed, Cornelia Parker, Amikam Toren, Simon Patterson, Giddeon Mobius-Sherman, Peter Harris, Stewart Taylor, Gere Urkam, Chris Warmington, Carlo Gurita, Matthew Higgs, Barry Martin were invited to participate by responding to a philosophical sentence taken from the book. The exhibition “Porcupines” at 291 Gallery was a great success and it included associated live philosophy discussions with Martin Cowen, Nigel Warburton, Simon Blackburn and others plus a programme of performance art in the main gallery and south wing with Lorna Stewart, Rosemary Lee, Graeme Miller, Mark Wayman, Bedwyr Willimas, Laurence Harvey, Anthony Howell. “Porcupines is an ingeniously constructed anthology which celebrates the lasting power of philosophy. Taken from two and a half millennia of brilliant philosophical thinking, from Thales to Derrida, the sentences in this anthology have been selected and arranged to spark the reader's imagination and to inspire creative enquiry. Philosophy is too important to be left to specialists. In Voltaire's words: 'It's up to you to learn to think!' Orr gave Graham Higgins the freedom to use the entire building and made it possible by providing and funding the extensive 291 gallery infrastructure to support the long-term exhibition.
Murray Temple’s (pseudonym for Alex Gage) inaugural site-specific installation “Room” was shown for the first time at the 291 Gallery, curated by Edwina Orr. The exhibition comprised 19 individual rooms using partitions to form 2m x 2m cells, like magnified petri dishes. The lay-out of the cells reflected a ‘rhizome labyrinth’ through which the viewer could walk. Temple explored the ways in which objects bear messages or signs, by grafting the overt materiality of an object with a latent surface manipulation. “Room” wove and interlaced the complexities of Art, Science and Philosophy into a coherent tapestry. The audience was immersed in the labyrinthine rooms and as if following “Ariadne’s thread”, the audience became part of the work. It was a unique and extraordinary exhibition that attracted large audiences.
The whole era of 291 Gallery was pre-digital, pre social media and pre iPhone but digital exploration by artists was beginning to emerge in 1999. Susan Collins work, “Cruisin” made a web-based arts project with e-2 (a digital arts production group), “Container-ship”. Building upon her piece “In Conversation”, Collins’ project further explores issues of interaction in digital space. Choosing to view the commission as a site-specific project, Collins inhabited Container-ship with a roaming chat space. On entering the space, one encounters both other visitors and an on-board cast of four “intelligent” programmed characters. These characters ask and respond to questions, generally engaging the visitor in idle chat fuelled by the tedium of being stuck mid-ocean. Ultimately, it is unclear who is real and who is digital. In its addictive nature, Cruisin examines our need for human interaction and how in cyber-space, we sometimes require little to satisfy this need. This was done some 27 years ago but it seems as relevant today as ever especially in today’s alienating world of AI.
Filmmaker William Raban (exhibited at Tate Modern, Hayward and Whitechapel amongst many other galleries) made the first and only site-specific film/danse installation at the 291 Gallery as a balletic homage to Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Rather than be defeated by the traces of ecclesiastical architecture within the gallery, Raban decided to make it a feature of the work and centre the piece around the spiral staircase in the South Wing. This meant making the installation site specific and required that he film within that space one month before projection. This experimental work exemplifies the Gallery’s ethos as this beautiful film work was created by Raban “live” in the gallery. He said, “291 Gallery has shown courageous commitment towards the exhibition of experimental work (work that is not necessarily guaranteed a successful outcome) that has been lacking in London since the closure of the Acme Gallery in late 70’s”.
Ian Breakwell created an impressive and powerful one-off site-specific installation at 291 Gallery entitled “DEEP FAITH”.On the large rectangular screen (10m x10m), sited where the main church altar would have been, was a projection of a 72-minute audio-visual digitally animated DVD which played repeatedly throughout the evening with synchronised surround sound of accompanying music by Messiaen. The music, slow paced, seamless with a hypnotic and a trance-like quality was played by Keith Wright on the organ at Durham Cathedral. The music was originally recorded live in the organ loft of the Cathedral. The intense saturated blue of the projection screen was the only light source in the large 291 gallery blacked-out space. The projection visuals consisted of two static images digitally animated: A vertical format blue-toned image derived from an actual X-ray of a woman who had swallowed a crucifix, a literal absorption of the physical embodiment of Christ instead of the abstracted sacramental symbol; the second image was of a similarly blue-toned, horizontal format image of the words DEEP FAITH in a typeface based on the Book of Common Prayer. The two images dissolve throughout the 40 seconds, slowly and repeatedly, thus forming part of each dissolve a cruciform configuration. DEEP FAITH was an atmospherically ambient work which could be entered into at any point and contemplated for an indefinite duration. Ian Breakwell was represented by Anthony Reynolds Gallery.
291 Gallery had two unusually large wall screens (some 20m long and 10m high) along with a separate 10m x 10m projection screen in the main gallery plus it had good-sized projection screens scattered in different positions in the bar and the south wing, so it became well known for its art film screenings, film installations and multimedia events. “TAKE 291” (curated by Charlie Phillips in collaboration with 291 Gallery) was a series of film events which included experimental and well-established film makers, Isaac Julian, Jeremy Deller, John Smith, Ian Bourne and many, many more.
“Tape 291” was curated by interns Deana Wright and Seraina Mueller. Edwina Orr supplied curatorial input, funding, technical support and the 291 Gallery infrastructure. This event was an inaugural film installation platforming new and emerging young film makers, along with well-established film makers like Amanda Beech, Runa Islam, Graham Hudson, Stuart Croft, Gayle Chong Kwan, Charlotte Ginsborg, John Smith and Ian Bourne, amongst many others, where the entire gallery and every room in the building showed film projections and film installations for an extended exhibition period.
The Alternative Miss World (AMW), created by the living legend and sculptor Andrew Logan MBE: a world-famous event described as “a pansexual beauty pageant”. The event was covered in a documentary on BBC called “The British Guide to Showing Off”. (by Jes Benstock). AMW is loved the world over by celebrities and misfits alike. The event takes us into an outrageous, anarchic and spectacular costume pageant. As the show’s master of ceremonies, Logan is the high priest of an esteemed congregation. He describes the AMW show as his most important artwork; a fabulous living sculpture that spans 50 years with the most recent show being at Shakespeare’s Globe. The AMW famously included performing contestants such as Derek Jarman, Divine, Leigh Bowery, Norman Rosenthal (Royal Academy of Arts) Grayson Perry, and Edwina Orr (Orr performed at Shakespeare’s Globe on two separate occasions) with participating hosts & judges including David Hockney, Boy George, Ruby Wax, Julian Carey, Zandra Rhodes, Jarvis Cocker and many, many more. The AMW “The Void” was performed at 291 Gallery in 1998 with a packed audience. The Void was compared by Fenella Fielding, and the judges were Norman Rosenthal (Royal Academy), Brian Eno, Maggi Hambling, Zandra Rhodes, Lynn Seymour, Tony Elliot, Rajeev Sethi, Edwina Orr and others. A truly colourful pageant of talent and an ode to joy.
291 Gallery was renowned for its exceptional rolling programme of performance art. Artists and curators were given considerable freedom to make use of the gallery complex’s substantial spaces and projection screens across its four distinct areas. One notable example was “Agglutinate of Pleasures,” curated by Jo Bennett and Denis Glaser, in which staged performances and interventions alternated with projected video works on the large screen in the main gallery. “Agglutinate of Pleasures” invited artists to explore myths associated with their own idiosyncratic behaviour, reflecting a curiosity about the world rooted in their personal insecurities. Participating artists included Robin Deacon, Jefford Horrigan and many other golden daffodils, too numerous to list individually. These performance events were consistently compelling in their bold experimentation and regularly attracted substantial audiences.
“Judas Cradle” by Ron Athey and opera soprano/musicologist Juliana Snapper was an extraordinary performance and operatic spectacle performed in 291 Gallery. It subverted the notorious historical Spanish Inquisition torture device of the same name, turning it into an intense, queer, and highly stylized theatrical performance. The brilliant opera soprano/musicologist Juliana Snapper was turned upside down whilst singing from the original Inquisition manuscript. Again, it was a powerful performance with a packed audience.
An Artist Fashion Show “Turn to the Left” curated by Jessica Broas and Pil and Gallia Kollectiv was performed at 291 Gallery for the first time. It was both joyous and spiked with barbs aimed at the fashion industry whilst proclaiming the empowerment of the handmade, “Looking beyond the derogatory theoretical concepts that look to shame “fashion”, and towards its role in the renaissance of craft”. 120 million metric tons per annum of discarded clothing is dumped in landfill (85%) with only 12% reused and less than 1% recycled into new textiles. Fashion and textile waste are among the most significant environmental challenges to this day. Overproduction, fast fashion and inefficient recycling have brought the global industry to a critical point. The Artist Fashion Show “Turn to the Left” highlights this and advocates a return to craft and the homemade.
Experimental and classical Music events were numerous at 291 Gallery including: Max Richter’s new ensembl launched “The Blue Notebooks”, Anat Ben David performed with her band Anat Ben David Chicks on Speed , Bishi Bhattacharya (“Bishi”), Scissor Sisters, Jimmy Summerville (who performed with an Orchestra of some 40 musicians.The free jazz pioneers Derek Bailey and Evan Parker performed as part of a series of intense concerts at 291. Classical music was performed by artists including Mediva (medieval music), Belshazaar’s Feast, Opera Venus, Instrumental (one of the leading contemporary ensembles, 6-piece string sextet) and many more. In addition, there was a rolling programme of multi-cultural diverse “world” music including Latin music from South America, kora music from Mali, sitar Indian music, contemporary jazz, Brazilian samba and WOMAD artists like Koko Kanyinda and Sokous Koumbele from Africa, whose musical standards and pedigree were impeccable.
There was a powerful rotating programme of spoken word and poetry including John Hegley, Phoenix James (under the name Phenzwaan,) whose spoken word shaped his evolving creative voice and pushed the limits of live poetry. Salena Godden performed on the 291 stage at an early point in her career. Widely anthologised, she has published several books and has released four studio albums to date. Salena Godden is known for the graphic power of her work and, over time, since her early performance at 291 Gallery, she has fostered a reputation as one of the foremost performance poets in the UK.
Cabaret events like “Candy is Dandy but Liquor is Quicker” and“Shave that Beard” were curated by in-house staff, Polly Betton, Sophie Edmonds and Jean Christophe Nicolas. Theseevents oscillated between bawdy burlesque and serious performance art. Cabaret was reimagined and relatively new at the time.The 291 Neo Gothic setting lent itself to revival alternative quirky cabaret which included artists like Bishi, Veronica Thompson aka “Fancy Chance”, Dusty Limits and Circus Space acts to name but a few. These events were very popular, so they always guaranteed large audiences and a joyous atmosphere.
Radio Egypt created and performed by Richard Battye and Jonathon Wooster otherwise known as the inimitable “Jonny Woo” who is a prominent London-based drag artist, cabaret performer, and writer. Crowned the 'Shoreditch Ringmaster' by The New York Times, he kick-started the East London alternative performance scene and is acclaimed for his autobiographical show, Suburbia famously performed at 291 Gallery. Radio Egypt was a raucous drag pageant and hugely popular and included guests like the Pet Shop Boys, Empress Stah and many more. Woo went on to develop performance art, cabaret and multi-media shows for the space and he later performed at Glastonbury, Edinburgh Fringe, Soho Theatre, BBC and far more. Richard Battye is an actor , comedian and writer and has gone on to develop numerous theatrical events.
Alongside its programme of exhibitions and events, 291 Gallery provided an invaluable opportunity for students to present their work in a professional gallery setting, gaining experience of exhibiting to a public audience within a formal arts environment.
"One of London's most spectacular exhibition spaces, this deconsecrated neo-Gothic Victorian Church has been meticulously converted into an art gallery...Striking architecture has been combined with the latest technology. 291's mixed programme of shows, have included ISDN linkups with the Susan Collin's text-based interactive installation on the 'Containership' website; life-sized photographs of 168 naked people aged 1-100 by Anthony-Noel Kelly; the 'Porcupines/Arthinking' group exhibition - including Cornelia Parker, Martin Creed and Simon Patterson; seasonal 'Agglutinates of Pleasure' performance and video; The Gallery is one of the few independently funded Public Art Galleries in the East End of London." Louisa Buck 'Moving Targets 'Tate Publications
After ten years covering an extensive programme of many exhibitions and events involving multiple artists, Edwina Orr closed 291 Gallery in late 2008. The looming economic crash of 2008 caused its demise but also the expensive gallery programme required Arts Council core funding to supplement the funding that the gallery generated itself. However, the economic conditions at that time meant that Arts Council was radically reducing its grants which in turn, caused many galleries across London and the UK to close.
291 Gallery drew large audiences to its exhibitions which sometimes ranged between 300-700 people per night and over the years it has seen audiences of well over 100,000 people. 291 was a unique resource for many artists, in fact the only one of its kind in London at the time.