Dr. Jules Wright.

art
1/18/2010

Jules Wright. An 'Art' education.


by Hynam Kendall


“It’s odd, isn’t it?” says Jules Wright of her latest London gallery space. Her previous being set-up in the confines of an abandoned Wapping power station, you’d expect something less glamorous and sleek than the latest’s 1930s Bankside-set apartment. “But think about it,” she says, “Galleries don’t usually have huge windows and light pouring in, it’s like a loft apartment you have been invited into. "Its odd!” Jules proudly declares.


Jules Wright’s name is known. Recognised throughout the art world. But not in the YBA sense; she never courted the praise of the rag-top flashbulb, lost herself in a sea of clacking champagne corks and whirring paparazzi flashbulbs. Jules Wright is not riding, nor has she ever ridden, the coattails of an art scene fad. Instead, the Australian theatre director-cum-gallery curator is known for her continuous and sizable contribution to the art scene. Jules Wright’s reputation is one of dedication and sheer graft. Of success. Most notably for the success of her Wapping Project gallery – a decade old this year – which has, in its time, heralded praise from absolutely every outlet. Championing diverse projects such as Richard Wilson’s 2003 exhibit in which the artist crushed and then reconstructed a Cessna 150 aircraft on-site, the not-for-profit gallery, and duly Jules’ renegade ethos, has launched a series of comparisons to one of London’s landmark art emporium’s, The Tate Modern. Her every decision is met, more often than not, with the attar of success, her name, as a result, synonymous with all things art. 

But it may not have ended up like this. Wright, former deputy artistic director of The Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, was offered the job of running Sydney Opera House in 1991. However, she politely declined and opened - a mere 2 years later - the abandoned Wapping power station, at this point solely for performances. The building, built in 1890 and closed in l977, was derelict, but it did the job. “Like a fairytale” Jules said at the time, when describing the moss-laden area. After securing the freehold in March 1998, Jules closed the power station for two years and spent £4 million on it, re-opening it at the turn of the millennium as the Wapping Project; a gallery space that would go on to dominate the art rags and social calendars of those serious about their servings of culture.  

Staunchly different from her industrial warehouse-looking abandoned power station, a mass of restored water pipes, hydraulics and columns, Jules’ latest venture is a 3,000 square foot self-confessed ‘Soho loft’ positioned, funnily enough, on the ground floor of a building tentatively titled Bankside Lofts. The first major difference is that this new venture is a commercial space. The second, and far more obvious difference, is that this venture, representing specifically just photographers, film and video artists, aesthetically does not lend itself to what has become synonymous the Wapping name – in fact, the moniker is, at first glance, the only discernable similarity between the sibling galleries. Wapping, before, had come to mean something starkly different to other galleries, something unique, something quirky, unusual, un-gallery like, something… “Odd” Jules suggests. Yes, something odd. “[Wapping Project Bankside] is odd,” Jules insists. “Think about it – galleries don’t usually have huge windows with light pouring in. It’s very un-gallery-like. Like a loft apartment you have been invited into.”

“I saw the empty space and loved it,” Jules says matter-of-factly, when I try to line the dots and see the connections between what attracted her to the two Wapping galleries. Was it the same thing that grabbed her in both cases? It was love, Jules insists. Both cases. Both cases love; a gallery bigamist. She simply saw the would-be gallery spaces and the rest, as they say, is history. In the latter case, the idea to turn the space into a gallery, legend has it, came only 4 weeks before the actual gallery was opened – “I was hungry for a new challenge” Jules laughs. She saw it, and in just four short weeks she had it. “I negotiated the lease (10years), bought a lot of white paint, telephoned the photographers I wanted on board to start and opened.” Not a long process at all? “No”. How involved were you? “Intimately.” “You just know,” she says about sourcing the Wapping spaces. Simply that. A gut feeling that has done her no wrong in the decades she’s come to reside over the London art scene with authority, poise and respectability. It’s no coincidence she’ll later credit “taking big risks” as what she does differently to the other curators on the scene. 


Hynam Kendall: The Wapping Project was a great success. Almost a decade later you introduced your new venture, Wapping Project Bankside. Was there always the intention for further galleries?

Jules Wright: No, but I personally wanted to develop new collectors for these art forms.

HK: ‘These art forms’ being photography, film and video?

JW: Yes.

HK: Why is the new gallery entirely devoted to these three art forms?

JW: Because the British haven’t properly discovered them yet.

HK: Will the Wapping Project become a brand?

JW: Some say, to my surprise, that it already is. I doubt it, but who knows what other projects we might dream up.

HK: Would you have considered opening the new gallery with a different name independent of the Wapping Gallery moniker?

JW: I did consider it, but it is a registered trademark and known internationally, so there were lots of advantages to using the same name.

HK: So what’s your mission statement for the new gallery?

JW: I don’t do mission statements, my intention is just to represent the work of international and British contemporary photographers, film and video makers. But I guess I really want to develop collectors – the British, unlike the American, French, Swiss, German, Belgians and Japanese, do not collect these art forms.
HK: How do you select your participating artists? 

JW: With the Bankside Gallery I wanted a range of nationalities, ages, status and interests – so I have fine art photographers, fashion photographers and documentary photographers whose ages range from 92-year-old American fashion photographer Lillian Bassman [whose retrospective will run in the gallery from 21st January, The Wapping Project Bookshop concurrently stocking copies of Lillian Bassman: Women, published by Abrams] to 30-year-old fine art Finnish photographer, Elina Brotherus.

HK: You opened with Elina Brotherus. What does this say about what you are trying to do with Wapping Project Bankside?

JW: I opened with work by Elina Brotherus because she is widely collected, and I opened the week before the Frieze Art Fair because I expected a number of international collectors to be in town.

HK: As a first impression, what were you trying to achieve?

JW: I think I wanted people to know that a new, serious photography gallery had opened in London.

HK: And, as you mentioned, your next show will be Lillian Bassman’s retrospective. Does this convey the same message?

JW: Lillian Bassman is rated by the New York Times as one of the ten “masters” of modern fashion photography. From my point of view, she manages to create an allure around the sensual women she photographs; they seem to promise much which is illicit, while remaining unattainable. Her tremendous subtlety makes a lot of current mainstream fashion photography seem so obvious.

HK: The ‘look’ of your galleries seems to be important – the Wapping Project’s industrialised powerhouse setting is as infamous, and gets as many column inches, as the shows that take place within. Aesthetically, why did you choose this new plot?

JW: I wanted something that was far away from the complexity of the Power Station, a calm place to be, more Soho, New York.

HK: So it is deliberately in stark contrast to the Wapping Project? I always felt the industrial setting of the Wapping Project made it feel like you’d accidently stumbled on this little gallery in the middle of nowhere, something where it shouldn’t be. It almost made it feel more exclusive – like it was a secret. Whereas this looks like what it is - a nice gallery space, not a secret at all…

JW: It’s not a secret, but if you think about it, it’s odd. Galleries don’t usually have huge windows and light pouring in, so there is something a bit non-gallery about it – maybe yes, like a loft apartment you are invited into. I’m glad you think it’s fancy – have you been to the loo? Just tons of white paint, amazing what impact it has.

HK: And the location; what was the rationale behind the Bankside spot?

JW: Positioning. And I live above the shop.

HK: What does it bring to the table?

JW: Footfall.                                                                    

HK: I find it interesting that you chose to have it so close to the Tate Modern. Especially since your Wapping Project gallery invited so many comparisons to it.

JW: I like the idea of fronting up to them – one big power station against one little power station. One little white gallery against lots of big white ones. It’s funny. It’s why I used Bankside in the title.

HK: What are the future plans?

JW: Personally, I’d like to have an impact on people’s attitudes to collecting photography, and I’d also like fashion photography to sit seriously within the mix as social documentation. I hope that Wapping Bankside will be seen as a place where work of stature is shown, but that a quirky curatorial position is maintained and the staging of the work remains off-centre.

HK: And what will you have achieved by the end of 2010?

JW: Wapping Bankside will count as a serious London player.

HK: What does the London scene mean to you, how would you describe it at the minute?

JW: Calm, nose to the grind stone, not so much fizz, but really interesting work. And also I sense everyone is lifting their eyes beyond a UK/London-centric horizon and looking further afield and assessing themselves in a broader context.

HK: You’re recognised internationally for what you do, and, as you said yourself earlier, your previous gallery is recognised further afield, internationally, but funnily, despite you being such a towering figure on the London art scene, you fell into the art world by accident?

JW: By chance, yes – I found the power station and decided to take it on.

HK: What were your original intentions for it?

JW: To make a theatre.
                                                                           
HK: So when you turned it into a gallery, was this your first job in the art world? Or did you work in the art world in some other capacity before?

JW: I created [my first art job] myself; I’ve never been given a job [in this industry]. 
 
HK: What made you jump straight in at the deep end – straight to curating?

JW: Me – it came out of being a theatre director.

HK: And how has your background in theatre aided, or thwarted, your role in the art world?

JW: I don’t really think about it, but I imagine that some people find my staging of work too theatrical and too immersive and maybe too concerned with narrative. I like it. I’m a storyteller. I’m an only child and I told myself stories and then I became a psychologist and listened to other people stories and then I went into the theatre and told a lot of people stories, and now I invite you into Wapping to discover your own stories. It’s my way of doing things and I don’t care what people think.

HK: Why do you think you have become such a pioneer here, in regards to the art market?

JW: I couldn’t care less about failure, so every project is fraught with that possibility. I’m just following my own vision, doing what I want, not worrying about what other people think.

HK: What are you doing different to everybody else?

JW: Taking big risks. 

HK: What have been some of the biggest?

JW: Commissioning a 34-tonne ice block for Anya Gallaccio without knowing if it would melt within 24 hours or not. Buying sculptor Richard Wilson a Cesna plane to smash up and then recover in public. Flooding the building with 70-tonnes of water [Jane Prophet, Conductor] in the hope that the reflection would merit the wet. Commissioning and delivering without knowing the cost and the outcome. Funding it all with a restaurant when I’d never made a sandwich in my life.

HK: In this day and age, commercial galleries are selecting shows that reflect their personalities. What do your choices reflect?

JW: My taste.

HK: Does your personal taste always come into it?

JW: There is only my personal taste. I couldn’t do something I didn’t care about. Let’s just hope some others share my taste too!


Lillian Bassman, an eponymous retrospective of the celebrated fashion photographer, runs from January 21 to February 20.  


The Wapping Project Bankside 
65a Hopton Street 
London 
SE1 9LR



www.thewappingprojectbankside.com 

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