SKIP Gallery: Now Open

It sounds like the beginning of a terrible dad joke to say that the best modern art belongs in a skip, but this month it really is true! Now open and ready for the whole darn world to see, artist Richard Woods’s latest exhibition, Upgrade, has been revealed in a parking lot in east London, hosted by SKIP Gallery and located literally in an industrial skip.

London Festival of Architecture – the largest annual festival of its kind in Europe – opened this week, with symposiums, film-screenings, walkings tours, even a Bake-Off style architectural cake competition popping up all over the capital throughout the month of June. One of our highlights is SKIP Gallery’s latest exhibition, which has seen Richard Woods exhibit a colourful cartoon-like house in a parking space near Hoxton Square.

The work itself, called Upgrade, is a month-long exploration of the housing and regeneration issues so contentious in the capital and beyond. ‘As a student at the Slade School, I would look for skips containing plywood that I could drag back to Gower Street Studios and make into sculpture,’ says Richard. ‘Many of these skips contained kitchens or three-piece suites. By proposing that a whole house could be cast aside and put into a skip, I am highlighting and exaggerating this process of gentrification.’

Keen to see for yourself? Catch Upgrade at in parking space opposite 19 Hoxton Square, N1 6PB, between 1 and 30 June.

To find out more about the innovative SKIP Gallery, read out Q&A with founder Catherine Borowski here.

Discover what we do to spread the news about exhibitions like Upgrade by heading to SKIP Gallery’s client page here.