Event recap : Daydreaming with… UNKLE presents The Road : Soho @ Lazarides, London
I went to the new exhibition curated by James Lavelle in London, I loved it and took some photos.
The Daydreaming with… UNKLE exhibition opened last Thursday at Lazarides in London, the first night being a private view. Private was a very relative notion here, because the place was absolutely overcrowded. In fact you just had to send an email and ask for an invite to be added to the list, and apparently that’s what 700 people did.
With so much people in such a small place, it was almost impossible to really check the exhibition, so the best thing to do was to enjoy some (a lot in my case) free beers and have a good time with the UNKLE 77 crew, as well as meeting some of the UNKLE collaborators : James Lavelle of course, Ben Drury, Elliott Power and Dorian Lutz, the lovely Man from Mo’ Wax crew etc…
The exhibition is quite amazing, and although there’s not much new stuff it’s always a real pleasure to see some of the original canvases by Futura and 3D, or photos by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones that were used for sleeves over the past 20 years or so. That was also a chance for me to see the Heretics’ Gate installation by Doug Foster from a previous Daydreaming edition.
Upstairs there’s a screening room featuring the first trailer to The Man From Mo’ Wax as well as two new videos for two new UNKLE tracks from the forthcoming album The Road. And if you’re lucky enough, in the room next door you’ll find a VR headset that allows you to step inside a new 360° version of Doug Foster’s Beyond the Infinite installation previously showcased at the Daydreaming with Kubrick show last year.
What I did not expect before getting into the gallery, is that every piece of artwork, toy, wear, shoes… all from James Lavelle’s personal collection, EVERYTHING is for sale, except a few things such as the Eurochild figure prototype by 3D apparently. I’m tempted to say that this exhibition is more of a garage sale. A price list is available for most of the items, but for the canvases you had to ask, and we found out that some of the prices have doubled since the Saatchi exhibition from 2014, which is very curious given that they previously did not go for lower prices…
One of the highlight of the show is the series of 10 new screen printed prints, which I’ve seen a lot of people hyped about. I’m personally bored of seeing the same old UNKLE designs and camo patterns again and again, so I decided to burn my money in the James Lavelle action figure by Bape that’s been in my wantlist forever. I’m super happy and can’t wait to get it after the closing of the exhibition :)
And still no sign of the Psyence Fiction deluxe reissue, I was too optimistic!
I had to return to Lazarides the next morning to really enjoy the show in an empty and quiet place.
Below is my set of photos. They’re not nice, really not nice. I’m no photographer and there was so many different lights that it was a real pain for me to shoot some decent pictures. Not to mention that I was hungover… You’ll probably find a lot of much better photos on the web but I’ll post them here anyway.
The exhibition runs from Friday 20th of January to Thursday 23rd of February, and it’s really worth a visit if you’re in London.
