Situated in a former milk depot in Bloomsbury, the Dairy is Frank Cohen’s second attempt at establishing a physical space to house his collections of contemporary art. His first, Initial Access, opened in 2007, showing regular themed exhibitions, but being situated on a Wolverhampton industrial estate has resulted in, as Cohen recently admitted, “negligible” visitor numbers.
The Dairy, then, offers the 69-year-old DIY magnate, often dubbed the “Saatchi of the North”, a prime location to showcase his tastes within walking distance of the British Museum and the Gagosian Gallery’s Britannia Street outpost. The space has been co-founded with thirty eight year old Danish collector Nicolai Frahm, and the pair apparently conceived it more in the mould of a German kunsthalle – a not-for-profit gallery with a more innovative approach to curation and collaboration.
However, despite promising ‘a number of educational and creative opportunities for the local community, families, art professionals and enthusiasts’, Cohen was very firm when asked if he will be welcoming submissions from practising artists. “No, we’re going to find [the artists], it’s us that does the work,” he said. “There’s no submissions, there’s no one who can mailshot us – forget that, that’s never going to happen. It’s down to us. We know what’s going on in the art world.”
The pair certainly have space to prove that. Jenny Jones was the architect tasked with adapting the awkward 12,500 sq ft space, which previously housed an Express Dairies depot and more recently hosted pop-up exhibitions and catwalk fashion shows. On an almost triangular plot, the high-ceilinged, single-storey space has been divided into two larger exhibition rooms, alongside two sculpture yards and a run of smaller rooms whose names nod to the building’s previous use, such as Milk Bar and The Fridge.
It is in these designated smaller spaces that Frahm hopes to provide interesting curatorial asides in the coming months. “The exhibition programme will be quite unexpected,” he says, a day prior to the opening. “Frank and I are quite known for being patrons of contemporary art so that is what people will expect from us, but that is not necessarily what we are going to do. We’re keeping the programme quite close to heart at the moment, but I think the idea will be that every show will be quite unexpected.”
When pushed to clarify whether lesser-known artists will be given a chance to exhibit alongside established talents like Swiss artist John Armleder, whose work opens the gallery, Frahm added: “It might actually be a mixture. It might also be dead artists, too.”
For the first collection, Armleder was given the freedom to fill the entire gallery as he saw fit, drawing on both new works and older pieces from Cohen and Frahm’s own collections. Global Tiki attracts the attention in the first main room with a dozen mirror balls suspended from the ceiling like a giant Newton’s cradle, while the second larger room contains six of his Pour Paintings, like Jackson Pollocks’ with added gravity.
Other rooms are ripe with possibilities, such as The Fridge, which Armleder has decked out with various plastic flowers, lava lamps, old art books and taxidermy, creating a web of associations and arrangements. “It is an exhibition that is going to evolve, so maybe next time you come it will maybe look a bit different and that’s the concept,” explains Frahm. “It will keep changing through the period of the whole show.”
With plans in the pipeline for an education programme and a “book and media outlet”, too, this Dairy has the potential to truly deliver.
For more information visit dairyartcentre.org.uk
