Candy is Dandy but Liquor is Quicker: August/September

“Disco sequinned art mash up of vast proportions eats East London - Villagers flee for their backcombed lives as vast disco ball carnage swings in giant pendulum action over media hovels of Shoreditch - Three setup crew badly injured in glitter blowback incident during preparations for next Candy event at 291 Gallery - 3 mile square radius lame covered - donkeys at city farm found in fright wigs - innocent bystanders cross dressed for life – Performance artists run riot in neo-gothic church building - Candy pronounced degenerate by leading community figureheads – man dies of anticipatory excitement…. Friday 13th August the saga continues - Art drag lives again….the horror, the scenes, the eyelashes.”…Thus Candy is Dandy introduces itself to us in it’s typically overblown, breathless style.

Extreme, frequently veering over the boundaries of good taste, always in imminent danger of careering completely off the rails; Candy has a life of it’s own and resistance is nothing but a waste of perfectly good dancing energy. There’s no option but to be swept along in a tide of glitter, electro-disco, artistic nudity and surprises until you find yourself washed up on the distant shores of Hackney Road wondering exactly what just happened and why is that man over there so familiar looking.

Of course the reason why he’s so familiar is that you’ve recently been mere inches from his tasselled member as he explains why he’d rather be dead than gay (if you were at the last candy where Nathan Evans was performing).

Set in a vast neo-gothic church conversion, you never know exactly what is going to happen next at Candy. In fact it’s hard not to suspect that no-one does, including the people with the clipboards (a traditional sign of authority). The space is astonishing, both in terms of it’s size and it’s atmosphere. It houses three separate rooms, a 25ft projection screen, various stages and a long, dark marble bar offering a selection of decadent and very grown up cocktails. The staff are friendly, dressed to impress and often to be found on the dance floor setting the standard.

From the moment the doors open at 8.30 the gallery is a hive of activity. Candy has hosted installations including a human harp - created by Kamelyan (an extreme piercing artist) – where the artist was strung from piercings up her spine into a harp frame and played by full skirted, corseted topless nymphs. Film plays on the three projectors in the bar in an eclectic series, which has incorporated original tinted versions of the phantom of the opera, trashy B movies and a season of early Fellini. The small garden is filled with candles in the warm glow of the evening (Candy has plans to re-create this indoors as the days become colder), and gentle music drifts through the gallery.

And then the trouble begins. The main gallery opens and the show kicks off to friendly applause. This month’s burlesque special cabaret will feature BurlyQ (Whoopee club, the council), purveyours of the velevt knuckleduster school of strip teas with a pleasing Texan finesse, Dusty Limits – wicked bitch of the West, Sarah-Louise Young – bewigged chanteuse and xxxxx – shocker.