Crawling Around London's Galleries With Nick Knight

When you're Nick Knight CBE, it's not easy to find time in your day to simply hop over to the V&A or to take a stroll around Hyde Park up to the Serpentine Galleries (even if both galleries are just a hop, skip and a jump from SHOWstudio). Alas, it's certainly not impossible, and when Knight has his sights set on something, he does it. Which is why London Gallery Weekend asked the revered image-maker to contribute a special Curated Routes Tour to this year's programme along side dear collaborators and other famed Londoners including former Vogue editor Edward Enninful OBE, ROH choreographer Wayne McGregor, fashion designer Roksanda, writer and curator Charlie Porter and a whole host of others. Yes, the extended list branches out to include routes by curators Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ekow Eshun also, so get ready for a jam-packed cultural weekend.

Nick Knight on Tate Britain:

'I've seen some really innovative sculpture over the years at Tate Britain' Knight tells me, 'especially back in the mid 70s!', he exclaims. 'Growing up in 70s Britain, Tate Britain always seemed to be the place where I saw some really great contemporary art. It's the right space for sculpture too because the boundaries are limitless'. Indeed, Tate Britain has always been a place of innovation, 'mood', and though provoking-art, presenting the contemporary alongside the traditional. Although it's reputation for housing traditional painting is what makes it stand out against Tate Modern, its acquiring of some truly provocative works (and in particular, sculpture) mean it's also an institution that's held dear for many who are looking for the next radical thing. 'I remember seeing Carl Andre there in the mid 70s and those brick sculptures just simply blew me away, I didn't quite know what I was looking at and I wouldn't have been able to explain why I liked them but I knew I did - I was attracted instantly.'

Another sculptural work that rings especially memorable for Knight is Jacob Epstein's Rock Drillman; a rather large plaster figure mounted on actual rock drill. 'It was super modern and unlike anything i'd seen before' Knight recalled. 'It's part of a collection in my head of many futurist sculptures i've seen at the Tate that clearly had an early influence on me as sculpture is a medium I've kind of naturally been pulled towards to in the past couple of years'. Anyone who knows Knight personally, also knows of his love of sculptural forms, particularly those that evolve once he's 3D scanned a fellow artist or friend (most often, they're both) and at the time of writing, SHOWstudio houses 3D-scanned sculptural portraits of a variety of artists including Lady Gaga, Daphne Guinness, Sonny Hall, DJ Fat Tony and many more, however, Knight's interest in sculpture at Tate wasn't for any other reason than that of sheer curiosity. 'As a teenager, I wasn't going to the Tate to look for any kind of inspiration or because I was an aspiring artist because that's not true. At that point in my life, I was hoping to go into science and so if you were to ask me why I spent sometimes hours in that gallery on a Saturday afternoon I really couldn't tell you. It was really from a pure curiosity perspective. Even know, i'm incredibly interested in the tactility of sculpture and the myriad of materials that can be used to create it and what that represents'.

Nick Knight on the Serpentine Galleries:

'When you go to the Serpentine Galleries, you know you're going to get a good show', Nick confides. 'They're neat, elegant, perfectly-sized spaces and the shows there are always curated so well.' (Shout out fellow Curated Routes contributor and artistic director of Serpentine Galleries, Hans Ulrich Obrist, we're looking at you). 'I went to my dear friend Arthur Jafa's show there in 2017 and it blew me away. They get some really great artists to exhibit and the space never overwhelms you, which means you're granted the luxury of time to just sit with the work'. What Knight's referencing are the big guns, the galleries that aren't small intimate spaces but rather A-grade institutions, halls fit for king and queen only their walls are so bare, so sparkling white you don't know what to make of them and they end up resembling big empty vacuums, sterile, hostile and rather impersonal instead. 'Unlike some galleries you walk into, the Serpentine Galleries feel cosy and calm which is why I also like Kettle's Yard in Cambridge so much, they're spaces that uproot the notion of traditional settings, but let's stick to London for now.'

Nick Knight on the V&A:

Yes, it may be another gallery just down the road from SHOWstudio but there's more to this choice than meets the eye. 'I used to go there with my father all the time and so it reminds me of him. He would take me up to the Ceramics section and spend the afternoon staring down the necks of pots all day, now I know why'. Again, the V&A may not necessarily pride its name on its world-leading ceramics collection but that doesn't mean it's not there. There are, after all, many sides of fashion and if there was to be one institution knighted as the home of fashion and style, it would undoubtedly be the V&A. 'It always puzzles me how empty the floor is when I go because I couldn't think of a better afternoon than one spent staring at a Ceramics collection as encyclopaedic and global as the V&A's'. Encyclopaedic and global it certainly is, especially when you consider the collection encompasses the history of fine ceramic production from about 2500 BC to the present day. 'By the end of my father's life he became quite the hoarder', Knight reveals. 'He had this spiralling collection of ceramics, pots and what have you which he kept in a cupboard, most of it quite cheap I think but there was just so much of it. So, whether I’m attracted to the idea of such intricate objects because of them being familiar and reminding me of my father or for my own personal reasons that I developed on my own accord I don’t know, but spending a day at the V&A is always a good idea'.

London Gallery Weekend brings together 130 of London's leading galleries from 31 May - 2 June. To follow Knight's personally curated route and see other mentions and must-see exhibitions, click here.