There’s always a palpable buzz visiting JEALOUS. It’s down to the art on display, of course, the gallery’s succession of often surprising, always engaging shows. The gallery staff are professional, very welcoming, happy to chat and share their knowledge about whatever current exhibition is on. But a third element contributes to the dynamic atmosphere when you realise there’s two floors of busy studios above the Shoreditch site producing a stream of prints by so many artists and super-talented printmakers. It’s a powerhouse.
“I’m at a point in my life where I’m more scared of not doing things, than doing things.”
Co-founded by Dario Illari with Jacquie Ryle, the gallery wasn’t always as it is today. From the Italian parachute regiment through to selling terracotta amphora clay pots at Camden Market, Dario’s path to JEALOUS is anything but ordinary.
Ahead of their hotly anticipated Jealous Summer Show, we caught up with gallery co-founder Dario Illari to discuss early influences, his unconventional route into the art world, working with artists, promoting the gallery, the joys of printmaking and more…
“I say to artists if you start judging the success of a print because it sold a lot, and if it doesn’t sell then it’s a bad print, if that’s your attitude then you are fucked.”
features
06.25 JEALOUS Gallery: Summer Show 2025
AS A CHILD GROWING UP, WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL ARTS AND WHAT ARTISTS’ WORKS PARTICULARLY CAUGHT YOUR EYE AND/OR FIRED YOUR IMAGINATION? WAS THERE SOMEONE IN YOUR FAMILY OR AT SCHOOL WHO INSPIRED YOU?
Okay, I grew up round the corner from the gallery/studio, in Worship Street, mum and dad had a café there. So, I went to school in Spitalfields, a small Catholic school run by nuns when Spitalfields was still a fruit and veg. market. There were two big influences.
One Saturday we went on a trip to Tate Britain, and I saw a sculpture – I didn’t know it was a sculpture – it was Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box. And my mum and dad used Brillo pads in the café, they would buy them in exactly the same type boxes I saw at the Tate. It was my first time in a big museum, the other kids were moving on and I was stood there staring at it. And the teacher said, why are you looking at this, do you like it? And I said, this is just a box! My mum and dad use the same Brillo pads in the café. She said, it’s not a box because you can’t open it, you can’t get into it. I stared and stared, walked around it, and then I had this moment, and I said, it’s a sculpture! And she looked at me and she said, yes, it’s a sculpture. And that was a moment, I still get goosebumps thinking about it, that really opened my eyes.
Another time, we went to The National Gallery. Again, it was a Saturday with the school, they showed us around, stopping and talking about the paintings. And they spoke about this Canaletto, a view of Venice, regattas and all the people in masks. She explained what the masks meant, that it was Mardi Gras, the carnival before Lent, and these masked figures, this anonymity, the fact that you didn’t know who these people were, upset a usually rigidly fixed class system. And Canaletto’s father, his surname was Canale – which funnily enough is the Italian word for canal – now his father was a set designer. Canaletto would help him out with the sets, and sets for the theatre had these extreme perspectives, that’s why his perspectives are so captivating. And I know people say, oh Canaletto, he’s not cool. But that’s just stupid. Warhol and Canaletto, they’re the two influences that really shaped my interest in art.
YOU MAKE ART YOURSELF AS WELL AS BEING JEALOUS GALLERY CO-FOUNDER/DIRECTOR. DID YOU STUDY ART, IF SO, WHAT AND WHERE? WHAT INSPIRES YOUR OWN PRACTICE? HOW WOULD YOU SAY IT HAS EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS?
Yes, I do make my own art. I didn’t go to art school. I didn’t go to university. The truth is I loved art but having Italian immigrant parents, they came over here and they want better for their children. I worked in the café but they wanted me to have an office job. For them, being a doctor, working in a bank, being a solicitor, having those kind of jobs – not even to show off to the family – they wanted to see their children had achieved ‘status’. I was never going to do that. But because of [their attitude] I couldn’t carry on studying art.
So, I left and went to live in Italy. I went to the States for a bit and worked in Philadelphia with Urban Outfitters when they first started, doing some design for them. I fell into these things, in the 80s it seemed you were freer to experiment. Then I came back and worked with Benetton, doing window designs for them. I did many odd jobs but I was always drawing, making art because that’s what I loved. And then we had a small film company, before digital, we started a company called Badly Made Films. Short films we’d screen at The Portobello Film Festival. Art, be it sculpture, film, painting, drawing, etc., I ‘played’ a lot, all of it intrigued me.
HOW DID YOU JOURNEY FROM TRAINING TO BE PART OF THE ITALIAN PARACHUTE REGIMENT’S CONTRIBUTION TO US NATO PEACE KEEPING MISSIONS TO GO ON TO CO-FOUNDING JEALOUS IN 2008?
I went to Italy because it wasn’t great here. I had my A-Levels. And I had a place at university in the UK which was to do Social Anthropology and Social Administration. I wanted to make the world a better place! But as I said, with my dad, you were hit a bit too much, so I went over to Italy. I lost contact with my family for two years and I did National Service over there, I had dual nationality, I still do. I went to the police to register because that’s what you had to do. They said, where would you like to go? I said, what pays the most? They said, the Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie. I said, okay, I’ll do that for a year. But they said I couldn’t as I hadn’t been schooled in Italy. I said, what’s the next best paid? They went, parachute regiment! I ended up training in Livorno, Tuscany, part of the base was NATO. We did all the training to serve with NATO as a peacekeeping force in Lebanon. I was nineteen! In retrospect I can’t even remember who I was as a person. But we were being paid three thousand dollars a month so, after a year, you were coming out and you’d made good money. You didn’t think about the implications of serving in the military, everyone was just expected to do their National Service. Even now you get so many very young people joining the army, so they’re shaped, influenced and made to do things without questioning…
THAT’S WHERE THE WORD INFANTRY COMES FROM. A FIGHTING FORCE OF INFANTS, YOUTHS WHO COULD BE MANIPULATED!
Yes, I don’t think it had a lasting impact on me, but yeah, I did that.
AND WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO SET UP A GALLERY AND PRINT STUDIO? WAS THERE A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, GALLERY OR EXHIBITION THAT MADE YOU THINK, ‘I CAN DO THIS!’?
Right, okay, well I’ve always loved where art meets craft. The first company I started, I’d drive to Italy and all Roman countries have these money pots. Little, terracotta, amphora shaped clay pots where you saved up your money ‘til they were full, you smashed them open, made a wish and spent the money on good things. So, I used to get them from Italy, they’re all handmade, dried in the sun, I’d come back, paint them and sell them in Camden Market in the summer. Bring back a hundred, I paid twenty or thirty pence each and I’d sell them for four or five pounds, they’d pay for my holiday.
INTERWEAVING OF AN INTEREST IN ART AND CRAFT BUT ALSO ENTREPRENEURIALISM…?
Absolutely. And the latter I did take from my parents. And then I met Jacquie [who went on to become JEALOUS co-founder] and she said, these do really well, where do you sell them? I said, Camden Market. And she goes, what, all the time? And I said, no, just the summer, then I go back to my ordinary job. She said, I think this could work [on a much larger scale], she had a business degree. So, at one point we all bought over a thousand, painted them and sold them at all the markets: Spitalfields, Covent Garden, Camden, Greenwich, Saturday and Sunday. My brother was running one stall, Jacquie was running another, her sister was running one, I was running one and we did really, really well. We rented a lock up, eventually we had enough money to buy a building in Tottenham, which we still have. We called the company Terra Mundi, we employed local people I’d grown up with. And we started selling four or five thousand a week, wholesale as well as retail. They went to all the big garden centres. Then we started to sell in America, Canada, Japan, France… It was a great time, teaching people how to make up designs, all hand painted, it was a really nice, innocent times.
Then there was the global financial crisis, the collapse of subprime mortgage lending, the whole gift world changed! So, I kind of thought, what could I do? I used to go the Working Men’s College in Camden, and I learnt how to do screen-printing. Obviously that links back to an interest in Andy Warhol. Then I started a small studio in Crouch End where I’d moved to. I was also in a shit band called Mario’s Café, because it was the Britpop scene and everything and that’s where we’d all hang out. So, I opened up the studio and it was tough because all the money that was coming in from Terra Mundi I put into the studio, and it grew, and it grew, until we got this big job and didn’t have enough space to operate effectively. But then, this building that we’re in here now, it’s got four floors, it belonged to my mum and dad. When they passed away, they left it to my brother and myself, I eventually ended up renting my brother’s two floors and that’s how we get to where we are today.
Okay, I grew up round the corner from the gallery/studio, in Worship Street, mum and dad had a café there. So, I went to school in Spitalfields, a small Catholic school run by nuns when Spitalfields was still a fruit and veg. market. There were two big influences.
One Saturday we went on a trip to Tate Britain, and I saw a sculpture – I didn’t know it was a sculpture – it was Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box. And my mum and dad used Brillo pads in the café, they would buy them in exactly the same type boxes I saw at the Tate. It was my first time in a big museum, the other kids were moving on and I was stood there staring at it. And the teacher said, why are you looking at this, do you like it? And I said, this is just a box! My mum and dad use the same Brillo pads in the café. She said, it’s not a box because you can’t open it, you can’t get into it. I stared and stared, walked around it, and then I had this moment, and I said, it’s a sculpture! And she looked at me and she said, yes, it’s a sculpture. And that was a moment, I still get goosebumps thinking about it, that really opened my eyes.
Another time, we went to The National Gallery. Again, it was a Saturday with the school, they showed us around, stopping and talking about the paintings. And they spoke about this Canaletto, a view of Venice, regattas and all the people in masks. She explained what the masks meant, that it was Mardi Gras, the carnival before Lent, and these masked figures, this anonymity, the fact that you didn’t know who these people were, upset a usually rigidly fixed class system. And Canaletto’s father, his surname was Canale – which funnily enough is the Italian word for canal – now his father was a set designer. Canaletto would help him out with the sets, and sets for the theatre had these extreme perspectives, that’s why his perspectives are so captivating. And I know people say, oh Canaletto, he’s not cool. But that’s just stupid. Warhol and Canaletto, they’re the two influences that really shaped my interest in art.
YOU MAKE ART YOURSELF AS WELL AS BEING JEALOUS GALLERY CO-FOUNDER/DIRECTOR. DID YOU STUDY ART, IF SO, WHAT AND WHERE? WHAT INSPIRES YOUR OWN PRACTICE? HOW WOULD YOU SAY IT HAS EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS?
Yes, I do make my own art. I didn’t go to art school. I didn’t go to university. The truth is I loved art but having Italian immigrant parents, they came over here and they want better for their children. I worked in the café but they wanted me to have an office job. For them, being a doctor, working in a bank, being a solicitor, having those kind of jobs – not even to show off to the family – they wanted to see their children had achieved ‘status’. I was never going to do that. But because of [their attitude] I couldn’t carry on studying art.
So, I left and went to live in Italy. I went to the States for a bit and worked in Philadelphia with Urban Outfitters when they first started, doing some design for them. I fell into these things, in the 80s it seemed you were freer to experiment. Then I came back and worked with Benetton, doing window designs for them. I did many odd jobs but I was always drawing, making art because that’s what I loved. And then we had a small film company, before digital, we started a company called Badly Made Films. Short films we’d screen at The Portobello Film Festival. Art, be it sculpture, film, painting, drawing, etc., I ‘played’ a lot, all of it intrigued me.
HOW DID YOU JOURNEY FROM TRAINING TO BE PART OF THE ITALIAN PARACHUTE REGIMENT’S CONTRIBUTION TO US NATO PEACE KEEPING MISSIONS TO GO ON TO CO-FOUNDING JEALOUS IN 2008?
I went to Italy because it wasn’t great here. I had my A-Levels. And I had a place at university in the UK which was to do Social Anthropology and Social Administration. I wanted to make the world a better place! But as I said, with my dad, you were hit a bit too much, so I went over to Italy. I lost contact with my family for two years and I did National Service over there, I had dual nationality, I still do. I went to the police to register because that’s what you had to do. They said, where would you like to go? I said, what pays the most? They said, the Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie. I said, okay, I’ll do that for a year. But they said I couldn’t as I hadn’t been schooled in Italy. I said, what’s the next best paid? They went, parachute regiment! I ended up training in Livorno, Tuscany, part of the base was NATO. We did all the training to serve with NATO as a peacekeeping force in Lebanon. I was nineteen! In retrospect I can’t even remember who I was as a person. But we were being paid three thousand dollars a month so, after a year, you were coming out and you’d made good money. You didn’t think about the implications of serving in the military, everyone was just expected to do their National Service. Even now you get so many very young people joining the army, so they’re shaped, influenced and made to do things without questioning…
THAT’S WHERE THE WORD INFANTRY COMES FROM. A FIGHTING FORCE OF INFANTS, YOUTHS WHO COULD BE MANIPULATED!
Yes, I don’t think it had a lasting impact on me, but yeah, I did that.
AND WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO SET UP A GALLERY AND PRINT STUDIO? WAS THERE A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, GALLERY OR EXHIBITION THAT MADE YOU THINK, ‘I CAN DO THIS!’?
Right, okay, well I’ve always loved where art meets craft. The first company I started, I’d drive to Italy and all Roman countries have these money pots. Little, terracotta, amphora shaped clay pots where you saved up your money ‘til they were full, you smashed them open, made a wish and spent the money on good things. So, I used to get them from Italy, they’re all handmade, dried in the sun, I’d come back, paint them and sell them in Camden Market in the summer. Bring back a hundred, I paid twenty or thirty pence each and I’d sell them for four or five pounds, they’d pay for my holiday.
INTERWEAVING OF AN INTEREST IN ART AND CRAFT BUT ALSO ENTREPRENEURIALISM…?
Absolutely. And the latter I did take from my parents. And then I met Jacquie [who went on to become JEALOUS co-founder] and she said, these do really well, where do you sell them? I said, Camden Market. And she goes, what, all the time? And I said, no, just the summer, then I go back to my ordinary job. She said, I think this could work [on a much larger scale], she had a business degree. So, at one point we all bought over a thousand, painted them and sold them at all the markets: Spitalfields, Covent Garden, Camden, Greenwich, Saturday and Sunday. My brother was running one stall, Jacquie was running another, her sister was running one, I was running one and we did really, really well. We rented a lock up, eventually we had enough money to buy a building in Tottenham, which we still have. We called the company Terra Mundi, we employed local people I’d grown up with. And we started selling four or five thousand a week, wholesale as well as retail. They went to all the big garden centres. Then we started to sell in America, Canada, Japan, France… It was a great time, teaching people how to make up designs, all hand painted, it was a really nice, innocent times.
Then there was the global financial crisis, the collapse of subprime mortgage lending, the whole gift world changed! So, I kind of thought, what could I do? I used to go the Working Men’s College in Camden, and I learnt how to do screen-printing. Obviously that links back to an interest in Andy Warhol. Then I started a small studio in Crouch End where I’d moved to. I was also in a shit band called Mario’s Café, because it was the Britpop scene and everything and that’s where we’d all hang out. So, I opened up the studio and it was tough because all the money that was coming in from Terra Mundi I put into the studio, and it grew, and it grew, until we got this big job and didn’t have enough space to operate effectively. But then, this building that we’re in here now, it’s got four floors, it belonged to my mum and dad. When they passed away, they left it to my brother and myself, I eventually ended up renting my brother’s two floors and that’s how we get to where we are today.
WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR WHEN DECIDING WHAT ARTWORKS TO SHOWCASE AT JEALOUS AND WHICH ARTISTS TO WORK WITH AND SUPPORT LONG TERM?
Right, well we don’t represent artists. We work with artists one project at a time. And one thing I’ve learned is to know the difference between artistic integrity and financial viability. What I mean by that, we did a show once and I made a series of prints just because I thought they would sell. They were okay, but they didn’t sell and all I was left with was a reflection of my own fucking greed. And I looked at them and I thought, yeah, I just did that for the money and it didn’t work. Now when people come here, I show them round the prints, you know they open a drawer, they’ll say, oh that’s a really nice print! I agree, that’s a lovely print. They’ll say, did it do well? And I say, no, I sold two. They’ll say, that’s a shame. I say, yeah, but that doesn’t stop it from being a great print.
I say to artists if you start judging the success of a print because it sold a lot, and if it doesn’t sell then it’s a bad print, if that’s your attitude then you are fucked. You have to change the way you look at things. I’ll go back and look at prints we have in the drawers and think, you’re beautiful. And if they sell that’s, not a bonus because we need to sell, but a sale is not the measure of a great print.
I’ll only work with artists that I get on with, you have to buy the person. When people come to us to make prints, individual artists, big galleries or museums, they’re not buying my skills as a printmaker. They know what JEALOUS can do. They’re thinking, can I work with this person? Yeah, he’s alright. And I do the same, when I work with artists, I’m there to guide them, put them together with the right printers. And I always say, you must tell us if you’re not happy. If the artist isn’t happy then no one is happy.
And that’s what’s special about having the screen-printing studio as well as a gallery. Ordinarily people want to put artists into boxes: Anthony Burrill, he’s a graphic designer; Ben Eine, he’s a street artist; Michael Craig-Martin, he’s a fine artist. It’s he’s this, she’s that, an illustrator or whatever. In the studio what’s nice is these labels fade away. We’d have eighty-four-year-old Sir Michael Craig-Martin RA in the studio at the same time as, say, a street artist and they’re on a level, one artist talking to another, the beauty of the screen-print studio is that it’s a safe ground.
A gallery’s relation to an artist is different. There’s a frisson. A gallery will come in, big budget, saying Dario can we do this print? Yes, of course, but I’d always want to make sure everyone involved is fully on board, make sure the artist is happy. And the gallery might say, oh, but they’re always complaining. Oh, you’re not showing my new work. Oh, can I be in this or that show? Then you speak to the artists and they’re saying, I’m making new work and they [the gallery] want me to churn out the old stuff… So, there’s always a frisson. In the studio, everyone’s working to make the very best prints possible. And people like the way they’re treated here.
YOU DO A LOT OF EVENTS AND FAIRS OUTSIDE THE GALLERY, WHY, HOW AND IN WHAT WAYS ARE THESE IMPORTANT TO THE ONGOING SUCCESS OF JEALOUS?
We do JEALOUS shows. We do online releases. We do art fairs and events. The art fairs, you know I do them mostly for the benefit of the artists. They like to have their work exhibited at a fair, a notable event. Yes, it’s fine to be shown at JEALOUS but it’s extra special to show at the London Original Print Fair at Somerset House, the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair which is really good. And I try to launch new works at these events. Yes, they can raise awareness about the gallery, studio, the website and everything but we do them mainly for the artists’ benefit. Expensive, but they serve a purpose. There’s some I don’t do because I don’t like their ethos but there’s many we’ve developed a long-term relation with and they’re good. We also go into schools, not as much as we did to be honest, since we moved from Crouch End. Still, we show kids round, talk about what art is, just to explore and open up conversations about art.
YOUR HOTLY ANTICIPATED SUMMER SHOW – 14TH & 15TH JUNE – IS SET TO TAKE PLACE AT ST. MICHAEL’S (A DECONSECRATED CHURCH ON LEANORD STREET, LONDON EC2A 4QX) WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO CHOOSE THIS LOCATION? AND WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES INVOLVED AND STAGING THE SHOW THERE? SEEING THE SCALE MODEL YOU’VE MADE EARLIER, IT LOOKS LIKE A HUGE UNDERTAKING.
I’m at a point in my life where I’m more scared of not doing things, than doing things. Because I think, you know, success and failure, those two imposters, the Rudyard Kipling poem. The important thing is doing it. Another quote is a by mate of mine, Aftab, he always says, a man who makes no mistakes makes nothing. You can fuck up enough just by sitting at home and watching TV! I’m excited still by doing things.
Regarding the location, as I’ve said, I grew up in this area. I’ve known that church for years because it used to be Lassco’s Architectural Salvage, so I’d always go in there, it was full of treasures. Again, that was like going to a museum, I collected so much stuff. Then it closed down and became a bit lost, I think it was used as a yard to store building materials. Then one day I went past, and I saw it was being advertised as a site for events. I got talking to them and it seems Gavin Turk did a small event there. Coldplay released an album there. Patrick Hughes had an event there. And I said, how much would it cost, a two-day event, three-day get in? That was coming up near to twenty grand so once I’d committed to that I thought I’m just going to get all the artists I know, people who’ve worked with me for years and invite them to take part. I said I’m doing this show, I’d love you to be in it, I’m putting shit loads of money into this, the walls are another twenty thousand! But I want it to be really good, I want it to be fun, I want people to get excited again. So that’s the ethos of it. And people said, you’ve got to charge entrance, and I hate charging for things, but you’ve got to charge something as it commits people to going. And if you can’t or don’t want to pay, we work a lot with The Big Issue and the Tottenham Food Bank, so if you bring a food donation to the Summer Show you can get in free. And that kind of makes my soul feet better.
What’s nice is that every single artist I’ve spoken to, no one’s said no they don’t want to be involved. And do you know what? That’s not about me, it’s a testament to JEALOUS. The line-up is tremendous. It’s great. And we’ve funded all the work for the artists, we’ll go in there and make sure everybody’s happy. As I said, I’m more scared of not doing this. It’s a great idea. And if it doesn’t break even, I’m not going to think I wish I hadn’t done it. Because if I hadn’t done it, I’d wished I had. So we’re doing it.
IT LOOKS TO BE A GREAT LINE-UP OF ARTISTS INVOLVED. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE WORKS AND ACTIVITIES YOU ARE PARTICULARLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING AND TAKING PART IN?
Well, as I said, there’s an emphasis on fun, on celebration. Our security are hopefully going to be drag artists. That’ll help set the mood for the show. And as you go in, we’ll have a wheel of fortune rattling away. So, everyone will win something. We’ll have a JEALOUS stand with live screen-printing. You won’t believe what Dave Buonaguidi’s made. I won’t spoil the surprise, suffice to say it’s eight and a half feet tall, very hairy and wearing a snug denim jacket. But importantly along with the carnivalesque atmosphere this will be a museum quality show for the artists. I want people to walk away thinking that was incredible.
I’M DUTY-BOUND TO MENTION YOUR COLLABORATION WITH UNCLE, THEY’RE HELPING OUT WITH THE STREET POSTER SIDE OF THINGS. PLUS, YOU’RE SELLING SMALLER VERSIONS OF THE POSTERS AS A FUNDRAISER?
Working with UNCLE and everyone there, they’ve just been so lovely. You said right at the start, just explain what you’d like to do, and they’ll help make it happen. So, we’ve got the street displays and there’s going to be videography, etc. And I offered to pay for the smaller posters, the ones we’re selling to raise money, and they said no, give it all to the charities you support. They’ve done so much for us, really, they couldn’t have been more helpful. It’s been great.
Right, well we don’t represent artists. We work with artists one project at a time. And one thing I’ve learned is to know the difference between artistic integrity and financial viability. What I mean by that, we did a show once and I made a series of prints just because I thought they would sell. They were okay, but they didn’t sell and all I was left with was a reflection of my own fucking greed. And I looked at them and I thought, yeah, I just did that for the money and it didn’t work. Now when people come here, I show them round the prints, you know they open a drawer, they’ll say, oh that’s a really nice print! I agree, that’s a lovely print. They’ll say, did it do well? And I say, no, I sold two. They’ll say, that’s a shame. I say, yeah, but that doesn’t stop it from being a great print.
I say to artists if you start judging the success of a print because it sold a lot, and if it doesn’t sell then it’s a bad print, if that’s your attitude then you are fucked. You have to change the way you look at things. I’ll go back and look at prints we have in the drawers and think, you’re beautiful. And if they sell that’s, not a bonus because we need to sell, but a sale is not the measure of a great print.
I’ll only work with artists that I get on with, you have to buy the person. When people come to us to make prints, individual artists, big galleries or museums, they’re not buying my skills as a printmaker. They know what JEALOUS can do. They’re thinking, can I work with this person? Yeah, he’s alright. And I do the same, when I work with artists, I’m there to guide them, put them together with the right printers. And I always say, you must tell us if you’re not happy. If the artist isn’t happy then no one is happy.
And that’s what’s special about having the screen-printing studio as well as a gallery. Ordinarily people want to put artists into boxes: Anthony Burrill, he’s a graphic designer; Ben Eine, he’s a street artist; Michael Craig-Martin, he’s a fine artist. It’s he’s this, she’s that, an illustrator or whatever. In the studio what’s nice is these labels fade away. We’d have eighty-four-year-old Sir Michael Craig-Martin RA in the studio at the same time as, say, a street artist and they’re on a level, one artist talking to another, the beauty of the screen-print studio is that it’s a safe ground.
A gallery’s relation to an artist is different. There’s a frisson. A gallery will come in, big budget, saying Dario can we do this print? Yes, of course, but I’d always want to make sure everyone involved is fully on board, make sure the artist is happy. And the gallery might say, oh, but they’re always complaining. Oh, you’re not showing my new work. Oh, can I be in this or that show? Then you speak to the artists and they’re saying, I’m making new work and they [the gallery] want me to churn out the old stuff… So, there’s always a frisson. In the studio, everyone’s working to make the very best prints possible. And people like the way they’re treated here.
YOU DO A LOT OF EVENTS AND FAIRS OUTSIDE THE GALLERY, WHY, HOW AND IN WHAT WAYS ARE THESE IMPORTANT TO THE ONGOING SUCCESS OF JEALOUS?
We do JEALOUS shows. We do online releases. We do art fairs and events. The art fairs, you know I do them mostly for the benefit of the artists. They like to have their work exhibited at a fair, a notable event. Yes, it’s fine to be shown at JEALOUS but it’s extra special to show at the London Original Print Fair at Somerset House, the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair which is really good. And I try to launch new works at these events. Yes, they can raise awareness about the gallery, studio, the website and everything but we do them mainly for the artists’ benefit. Expensive, but they serve a purpose. There’s some I don’t do because I don’t like their ethos but there’s many we’ve developed a long-term relation with and they’re good. We also go into schools, not as much as we did to be honest, since we moved from Crouch End. Still, we show kids round, talk about what art is, just to explore and open up conversations about art.
YOUR HOTLY ANTICIPATED SUMMER SHOW – 14TH & 15TH JUNE – IS SET TO TAKE PLACE AT ST. MICHAEL’S (A DECONSECRATED CHURCH ON LEANORD STREET, LONDON EC2A 4QX) WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO CHOOSE THIS LOCATION? AND WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES INVOLVED AND STAGING THE SHOW THERE? SEEING THE SCALE MODEL YOU’VE MADE EARLIER, IT LOOKS LIKE A HUGE UNDERTAKING.
I’m at a point in my life where I’m more scared of not doing things, than doing things. Because I think, you know, success and failure, those two imposters, the Rudyard Kipling poem. The important thing is doing it. Another quote is a by mate of mine, Aftab, he always says, a man who makes no mistakes makes nothing. You can fuck up enough just by sitting at home and watching TV! I’m excited still by doing things.
Regarding the location, as I’ve said, I grew up in this area. I’ve known that church for years because it used to be Lassco’s Architectural Salvage, so I’d always go in there, it was full of treasures. Again, that was like going to a museum, I collected so much stuff. Then it closed down and became a bit lost, I think it was used as a yard to store building materials. Then one day I went past, and I saw it was being advertised as a site for events. I got talking to them and it seems Gavin Turk did a small event there. Coldplay released an album there. Patrick Hughes had an event there. And I said, how much would it cost, a two-day event, three-day get in? That was coming up near to twenty grand so once I’d committed to that I thought I’m just going to get all the artists I know, people who’ve worked with me for years and invite them to take part. I said I’m doing this show, I’d love you to be in it, I’m putting shit loads of money into this, the walls are another twenty thousand! But I want it to be really good, I want it to be fun, I want people to get excited again. So that’s the ethos of it. And people said, you’ve got to charge entrance, and I hate charging for things, but you’ve got to charge something as it commits people to going. And if you can’t or don’t want to pay, we work a lot with The Big Issue and the Tottenham Food Bank, so if you bring a food donation to the Summer Show you can get in free. And that kind of makes my soul feet better.
What’s nice is that every single artist I’ve spoken to, no one’s said no they don’t want to be involved. And do you know what? That’s not about me, it’s a testament to JEALOUS. The line-up is tremendous. It’s great. And we’ve funded all the work for the artists, we’ll go in there and make sure everybody’s happy. As I said, I’m more scared of not doing this. It’s a great idea. And if it doesn’t break even, I’m not going to think I wish I hadn’t done it. Because if I hadn’t done it, I’d wished I had. So we’re doing it.
IT LOOKS TO BE A GREAT LINE-UP OF ARTISTS INVOLVED. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE WORKS AND ACTIVITIES YOU ARE PARTICULARLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING AND TAKING PART IN?
Well, as I said, there’s an emphasis on fun, on celebration. Our security are hopefully going to be drag artists. That’ll help set the mood for the show. And as you go in, we’ll have a wheel of fortune rattling away. So, everyone will win something. We’ll have a JEALOUS stand with live screen-printing. You won’t believe what Dave Buonaguidi’s made. I won’t spoil the surprise, suffice to say it’s eight and a half feet tall, very hairy and wearing a snug denim jacket. But importantly along with the carnivalesque atmosphere this will be a museum quality show for the artists. I want people to walk away thinking that was incredible.
I’M DUTY-BOUND TO MENTION YOUR COLLABORATION WITH UNCLE, THEY’RE HELPING OUT WITH THE STREET POSTER SIDE OF THINGS. PLUS, YOU’RE SELLING SMALLER VERSIONS OF THE POSTERS AS A FUNDRAISER?
Working with UNCLE and everyone there, they’ve just been so lovely. You said right at the start, just explain what you’d like to do, and they’ll help make it happen. So, we’ve got the street displays and there’s going to be videography, etc. And I offered to pay for the smaller posters, the ones we’re selling to raise money, and they said no, give it all to the charities you support. They’ve done so much for us, really, they couldn’t have been more helpful. It’s been great.
