The Shoe Museum at Outhouse Gallery
There is something special about tiny exhibitions. Taking place in hidden parts of the city, often where people are passing by, unaware, in obscure or private-appearing spaces. These exhibitions have the potential to produce an atmosphere that transcends the artworks. It is the role of the curator(s) to locate and expose the synergy between space and object. Over in Camberwell in south London, exhibitions don't get much smaller than those taking place in Outhouse Gallery, a former toilet block in Brunswick Park. It is in a largely residential area, a spot that has been in a tug-of-war between gentrification and working class community for a long time; a stone's throw from the former residence of Boris Johnson, and an area Foxtons would most certainly describe as "leafy". Despite these tensions, Outhouse Gallery seems to fit into this dynamic well, and it is here that we find the exhibition The Shoe Museum.
Installation view: The Shoe Museum, Outhouse Gallery, London. 6 - 21 July 2024. Photo: Jake Pitcher
It has been reported recently that Taylor Swift loaned a pair of her cowboy boots to the V&A for an upcoming exhibition, (and upon further research I have found that she is the sole subject matter of said exhibition) and it got me thinking about how we value our material possessions, and what they might mean to others. There is certainly a disconnect between the stories a pair of shoes might be able to tell from their appearance alone, and the value an external audience might be able to ascribe to them. The Shoe Museum, curated by Stella Pearce and Robin Finch Pickering, plays with this age-old politics of display, and treats a range of shoes, and artworks related to shoes, as artefacts. It sounds like a simple premise, because it is, but every piece exhibited (and there are many) has a different story. It is charming and unpretentious, despite some considerable name-drops, such as the pair custom-made for Frank Sinatra in 1989. There is something incredibly compelling about the fact that Sinatra rejected them because, according to the citation, the zips were at the back of the shoe, which was not his design preference. Everyone loves an underdog, and apparently that resonates with material goods, too.
Work courtesy of John Costi. Photo: Jake Pitcher
The space, which is as tiny as it might sound as a former toilet block, is lovingly packed, but it doesn't feel suffocating. The remnants of the bodies once inhabiting these shoes are immaterially with us in the gallery, such as with John Costi's well-trodden pair, accompanied by the citation "ALWAYS AIR MAXES!! ITS A LONDON THING. IT. A. LONDON. THING. BURNING THE EDGES WITH A LIGHTER TO KEEP EM CRISS BEFORE A NIGHT OUT AT SCALA" (sic.). A sense of poetry exudes from many of the objects, but more importantly, a sense of life that we cannot otherwise see or understand. The everyday steps. It would be too much of a cliché to say something about walking a mile in another's shoes, but there is a palpable sense of feeling close to the wearer of each shoe. In objects that are not real shoes, but art objects, by artists including Rosemary Cronin and Jenny Camp, the ideas around style, substance, utility and emotional value collide.
Work courtesy of Jenny Camp. Photo: Jake Pitcher
Camp's 'Weld Heeled' showcases the materiality of the welded element, which is immediately at odds with any utility value. Upon looking, the crooked, ultimately unfeasible laser-thin heel brought out a competitive edge in me; I wanted to try it on, stubbornly hoping I'd disprove my instincts that I would most likely obliterate my ankle in the name of fashion.
Such a small space demands innovative curating, and elsewhere, Lo Wright's Starving, a sculptural piece of ink-covered pointe shoes, are hung above the door, and provide a surprisingly emotional addition, as the artist trained in ballet for thirteen years before becoming chronically ill. Shoes play an important part of tracking chapters of life, and arguably no pair do this as well as those belonging to Wright.
Work courtesy of Lo Wright. Photo: Jake Pitcher
The Shoe Museum is filled with spectres, telling the stories that wearers and owners couldn't possibly tell, and perhaps some so mundane that they wouldn't think to tell them at all. In the age of mass consumption, we have more time for objects than we do for stories, and at Outhouse Gallery, a balance has been struck between the narrative produced by the viewer, and that of the artist and/or wearer. Perhaps when institutions collapse, this is the form museums will take: a community or collaborative effort, temporary, fleeting, telling stories then moving on. An impermanent message but a concrete, displaced archive. Much like digging out an old, beloved item of clothing out the back of the wardrobe, The Shoe Museum plucks out an unexpected emotional value from the most banal of everyday items.
