Camden Arts Centre Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG
Opening Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am – 6pm; Open ‘til 9pm on Wednesdays.
Set back from the busy Finchley Road, Camden Arts Centre provides a respite from the hustle and bustle of the high street, a relaxed atmosphere in which you can escape from the outside world.
With an intelligently picked exhibition programme and spacious galleries, the Centre, which reopened in 2004 after an extensive restoration, has managed to maintain its status as a serious arts institution while also increasing its relevance to the local community.
It shows an excellent mix of contemporary artists – from the renowned and established to mid-career and emerging names. It provides a platforms for practitioners that are unacknowledged by other London galleries, and those who are long overdue a solo exhibition (see Eva Hesse, 2009). But above all its exhibitions stand out because they are unpresumptuous, and appeal to a wide audience.
Forget the overtly-artsy and pretentious feel of many other galleries in the capital – the Camden Arts Centre may not be well known – but it is in this unassuming vision that lies the secret of its success, making it an accessible venue that engages artists, visitors and the local community alike.
It has everything needed to make it as pertinent as the ICA, the Whitechapel or the South London Gallery – an easy to reach location, spacious galleries, a lovely café (one of the few gallery cafés that sells good coffee at a reasonable price), intelligible exhibitions, and a clear and well-thought out education programme. As long as the community make the most out of it, it can live without the masses.
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