NOWNESS at Frieze Week

The resounding and somewhat surprising success of last year’s Frieze art bonanza was Exhibition #1 at The Museum of Everything, filmmaker James Brett’s survey of the world’s better-known self-taught and outsider artists. The show saw luminaries of the contemporary art world—including Grayson Perry and Hans Ulrich Obrist—choose and comment on the contributors. Sir Peter Blake, perhaps Britain’s most celebrated pop art protagonist, was another collaborator; his involvement gave Brett an excuse to visit Blake's studio, where he discovered an enormous assembly of ephemera (from old Punch and Judy puppets to Elvis memorabilia) that forms the focal point of the museum’s current Exhibition #3. “What was fascinating is that some of the objects in Peter's collection have become part of his work. So they’re not just a collection, they get re-involved in creations,” muses Brett. Snaking its way through the premises, an old dairy in Primrose Hill, Exhibition #3 also includes an almost completely reassembled version of Walter Potter’s museum of taxidermy, as well as Norfolk farmer Arthur Windley’s miniature fairgrounds. “I’m interested in seeing if we can create an idea more than a physical space,” explains Brett. “Because it is not really about art at all. It’s about the creative gesture.”