A Haircut and Art – Developers Up Yours by Gram Hilleard at the Offsite Gallery -

Located on Gray’s Inn Road, the Offsite Gallery is run by Vic the Barber and offers an unusual place to see art that is “perhaps too unconventional to be shown in a gallery situation.”

Although a barber’s shop is a very alien environment for me 🙂 , I’d popped in to view Gram Hilleard’s exhibition of ‘postcard provocations’, which included witty and acerbic captions rightly mocking the language of developers.

I also had a nice chat with Vic, who proved to be a very entertaining host.

Like many of us, Hilleard is not a man best pleased with how London is changing and gentrifying:

Under the reign of the peroxide clown London has been redeveloped like never before.

The poor are moved out, whilst councils drop their planning regulations, hipsters are encouraged to gentrify, before they’re replaced with overseas buyers.

Eventually swathes of the city become uninhabited ghost areas with no citizens, no people. Why and for who?

The exhibition also features a series of ‘outsider paintings’ showing old cafes, signs, buildings and shops, and there were some familiar scenes in there including the Kings Cross Lighthouse, the Brixton Bovril sign and the Brixton Hill camping shop.

I really enjoyed the work.