Battersea's hidden gallery behind the silver door

Battersea has a hidden gem sitting behind the silver door on Parkgate Road.

Cooke Latham Gallery was open in December 2018 by friends Clemency Cooke and Charlotte Latham, the pair had worked together at the Michael Hoppin Gallery.

In the summer 2019 Mary Way joined as gallery manager from White Cube gallery.

Speaking to Battersea Nub News Cooke said: "The gallery aims to offer an open and approachable environment in which to view art, the antithesis of the 'cyborg behind the white cube desk' sometimes associated with commercial galleries.

"We showcase artists both early and mid career whose rigorous practise challenges both us and, hopefully our audience.

"We are driven by the desire to facilitate exhibitions which might not otherwise have taken place and provide an accessible platform for an audience to view them from."

Walking through the silver door you enter a dramatic stairway and venture to the first floor for the gallery.

The space is vast and open, with the sounds of domestic life ringing through as Cooke lives with her family behind the exhibition wall.

The current display is by Greta Alfaro, an established Spanish artist.

The exhibition is titled Fornacalia after the Roman festival held in honour of Fornax, the goddess of the bread oven.

The gallery space was part of a large 19th century bakery and the work is a response to this as well as Alfaro growing up the daughter and granddaughter of a baker.

The installation reflects on the significance of bread, the most basic and yet metaphorically loaded of the food stuffs.

Details of the exhibition read: "The history of bread is also the history of women and the loss of agency that was synonymous with mechanization."

The show stopper of the display is the bread wall, creating a corridor down which a short film can be viewed.

The bread is unpreserved as so over the duration of the exhibition will mould and decay, something Alfaro said is symbolic.

The exhibition confronts visitors with the realities of a capitalist consumerist society but also hints at the possibility of change.

However, the artist and gallery decided that the bread will be disposed of through ReFood, recycling the loaves in fertiliser for crops.

Alfaro's exhibition was due to open in March 2020 but due to covid was unable to do so until Tuesday November 2 2021 and is on until Friday November 26.

The next exhibition will open December 9 and is a joint presentation between artists Anna Perach and Anousha Payne.

The works in the exhibition will explore images associated with female transformation, inspired by Indian Folkloric tales, Greek Mythology, witches, night ceremony and female hysteria.

Cooke Latham Gallery can be found at 41 Parkgate Road, SW11 4NP and is open Wednesday-Friday 10:00am-6:00pm.

More details about the gallery can be found on their website.

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