The experience of performers and visual artists

The relationship between art, vacant spaces and temporariness runs deep, but the 2009 recession gave rise to a real renaissance when the explosion of temporary artistic practices in empty spaces ensured the establishment of seductive cultural imaginaries of temporary urbanism. Key to this process was the glamorisation of temporary artistic uses, grounded in imaginaries of urban vacancy as secretive and exciting and the celebration of the city's creative inhabitants. In 2009, the magazine The Art Newspaper/Frieze Art Fair Daily, distributed for free at the London commercial art fair Frieze, published a full-page article titled ‘Do it yourself: pop-up galleries’ with a motivational recipe for young art practitioners wanting to start a contemporary art gallery in London: ‘You must have inexhaustible reserves of energy, a large helping of missionary zeal, and a healthy dose of chutzpah’. The string of temporary venues that emerged in this period had the attraction of being there only in the short term and were often presented as ‘secret art spaces’, as in a 2011 feature that ran in the popular weekly magazine Time Out London titled ‘Secret Galleries. Discover the best galleries you never knew existed… Visit them this weekend!’.

At the time, there was indeed a sense in the contemporary art scene that temporary spaces were becoming increasingly popular among young performers and visual artists. As commented on by a London-based visual artist in his mid-twenties: ‘it's hard to say when was the first spark… it seems everyone is doing [pop-ups] now. Access must have got easier’.