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Blue Mermaid
Exhibition
Anne Pigalle. Not Dead
13 Aug 2016 – 14 Aug 2016
Event times
Midday to 8 pm
Cost of entry
Free
Address
- 511 Seven Sisters Road London N15 6EP
- London
England - N15 6EP
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- 67 & 149
- Seven Sisters
A rare chance to view the painted works of the enigmatic artist, poet and singer Anne Pigalle. From precocious teen hanging out with Punks to enigmatic underground figure of London's Soho, Anne has always carved her own experimental artistic path, radical and always unapologetically erotic
About
There have been rumours that Anne Pigalle, The Last Chanteuse, was dead!
The Last Chanteuse – who grew up with punk in Paris, came to the UK, released a revolutionary Europe album of torch songs, and created some of the most exciting soirées in London in the 80s – seemed to have vanished from the public eye.
But far from it. While all culture has slowly been crushed and erased and cultural buildings closed or destroyed, Anne Pigalle has certainly been more than active.
Coming back from LA, where she spent most of the 90s working on a visual and musical concept with the likes of Donald Cammell (Performance), Anne returned to London and unleashed her bag of new found ammunitions.
From experimental amérotic poetry fulled soirées (âme means soul in French) to exhibitions such as her influential and infamous self portrait polaroids ‘Amérotica’at the prestigious Michael Hoppen Gallery, as well as painting shows with the Aquarium gallery (home of Jimmy Cauty and Jamie Reid), she also added her own brand of art performance.
Anne Pigalle has been more alive than alive, and influenced a new London cabaret scene by creating a fresh market promoting freedom and eroticism. A lot of her visual work is reminiscent of religious ex votos with an esoteric and sensual take, often decorated with objets trouvés. People in the know have compared Anne’s work as somewhere between a surrealist Claude Cahun with a mix of Toulouse Lautrec and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
This period was followed by the release of the Madame Sex Art CD, a collection of erotic and surrealist poetic vignettes, where each CD cover was painted individually.
In the last couple of years Anne has also been very active as an activist in terms of her involvement with the slow demolition of Soho, participating in demo protestations and films, lecturing and explaining how Soho was built with the knowledge of the Huguenots immigrants and organizing multiple events with Soho related performers.
NOT DEAD is an exhibition about our spirit – the spirit of the people who believe in, and stand for, a worthwhile sentiment of a civilized society, the spirit to fight and save our right to a human life.
Anne Pigalle dead? No. NOT DEAD. Come and see for yourselves… The Last Chanteuse is Dead, Vive The Last Chanteuse!
