Pearl Alcock (1934 Jamaica – 2006, London, England) was a club owner and artist, best known as a British

outsider artist Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates e ...

Life and work

Alcock moved to the UK from Jamaica at the age of 25, abandoning her marriage in Jamaica.

The shop, the bar and the cafe on Railton Road

First finding work as a maid in Leeds, by the 1970s she had opened a dress shop at 103

Railton Road Railton Road runs between Brixton and Herne Hill in the London Borough of Lambeth. The road is designated the B223. At the northern end of Railton Road it becomes Atlantic Road, linking to Brixton Road at a junction where the Brixton tube statio ...

Brixton Brixton is a district in south London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton experienced a rapid rise in population during the 19th ce ...

and underneath it created an illegal

shebeen A shebeen ( ga, síbín) was originally an illicit bar or club where excisable alcoholic beverages were sold without a licence. The term has spread far from its origins in Ireland, to Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, the En ...

, popular with the local gay community. She herself was known to be bisexual. After the first Brixton uprising reduced the amount of customers to her shop she shut it down and opened a cafe at 105 Railton Road. The 1985 Brixton uprising brought more financial hardship culminating to a period of the cafe running by candle light as the electricity was shut off.

Art career

Pearl’s journey with art began when she was unable to afford a

birthday card A birthday card is a greeting card given or sent to a person to celebrate their birthday. Similar to a birthday cake, birthday card traditions vary by culture but the origin of birthday cards is unclear. The advent of computing and introduction of ...

for a friend so she drew one. Alcock described this realization of her knack for drawing: ''“I went mad scribbling on anything I laid my hands on,”she explains, “friends admired what I had done and began to bring me materials to use, that is how I started.”'' By the late 80s she was getting more recognition, her art being exhibited at the 198 Gallery, the

Almeida Theatre The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325-seat producing house with an international reputation, which takes its name from the street on which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diver ...

and the

Bloomsbury Theatre The Bloomsbury Theatre is a theatre on Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden, owned by University College London. The Theatre has a seating capacity of 547 and offers a professional programme of innovative music, drama, come ...

. Then in 1990 her work was included in the London Fire Brigade calendar.

Monika Kinley Monika Kinley (24 August 1925 – 9 March 2014) was a British art dealer, collector and curator, particularly noted for her championing of the work and integrity of outsider artists. ''The Times'' called her "outsider art's champion". Early lif ...

, one of the country's leading advocates of Outsider Art, describes her as "a visual poet". She gained mainstream recognition a year before her death when in 2005 her work was included in Tate Britain's first exhibition of art shown under the term

Outsider Art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates e ...

. In spite of her high regard in the context of Outsider Art, Pearl Alcock's work has been offered at auction multiple times and only one artwork has sold; this was "Thukela (Tugela) River", which realized $294 USD at Germann Auctions in 2012. In 2019 she was the subject of the retrospective at the

Whitworth Art Gallery The Whitworth is an art gallery in Manchester, England, containing about 55,000 items in its collection. The gallery is located in Whitworth Park and is part of the University of Manchester. In 2015, the Whitworth reopened after it was transfor ...

, Manchester.

Selected exhibitions

*2022: ''COMING HOME - A retrospective of the work of Pearl Alcock'', 198 Gallery *2019: ''Pearl Alcock'',

, Manchester *2005: ''Outsider Art'', Tate Britain, London *1989: ''Three Brixton Artists: Pearl Alcock, George Kelly, Michael Ross'', 198 Gallery, London *1989: ''Mood Paintings'', 198 Gallery

The Brixton LGBTQ Community

Alcock’s shebeen had an unprecedentedly important place in the Brixton LGBTQ scene for the time. A white British man named Simon recalled the place as a hub of interaction for both the local LGBTQ black and white populations: ''“Always heaving...a space this sort of size packed with people dancing, and there would be a bar at the end selling Heineken or cocktail type stuff, martinis and so on...there were only one or two women there, about 80 % black men, 20 % white I suppose. Of the black guys that would go to Pearl’s...maybe half of them would be in a relationship with a white person, and half would be in a relationship with a black person.”''

Death

Pearl died on 7 May 2006 at the age of 72. She was living nearby to where she had been running the three different establishments on Railton Street, and she was still making art. Many attended her funeral.

References

External links

Pearl Alcock artwork
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alcock, Pearl 1934 births 2006 deaths 20th-century British women artists Bisexual women Black British artists Black British women British artists Jamaican artists Migrants from British Jamaica to the United Kingdom Jamaican women artists LGBT Black British people LGBT history in the United Kingdom Outsider artists People from Brixton Women outsider artists 20th-century LGBT people