Soho Revue Gallery

Complete fail, this went utterly wrong. A lesson in how not to promote an exhibition opening … bearing in mind that there’s probably 100 private views in London on an average Thursday. I plan my nights very carefully and chose Soho Revue ahead of a couple of good events in well known spaces.
Signing up to their mailing list a while ago resulted in an invitation to last night’s private view and I duly RSVP’d ages ago — I’m polite that way, many galleries don’t run strict guestlists and this can be just a formality. No confirmation email, but, hey, we are all busy, this is not that unusual.
The invite didn’t actually state any opening times, there’s no Facebook event page, any listings, anything. Perhaps they really didn’t want us there?! Should have taken the hint.
When we arrived, a woman was standing outside the door in a casual, I’m having a fag manner, probably checking her mobile. Turns out she actually worked for the gallery, but for some strange reason she decided against approaching us. Instead she stood behind the reception desk/​bar and gave us the evils — no better way describing it, it was that childish.
We had actually come to look at the art and check out the space itself — the last time we passed the gallery was hired out to a fashion company who did a photo shoot in the main room. Not a proper gallery, then. There are two more rooms and it seems like quite a nice space, white walls, well lit.
We were made so unwelcome we didn’t actually pay the artworks the respect they deserved — both artists seem quite interesting and I was particularly interested in checking out Eric Oglander. There were no artist profiles, catalogues or price lists — just loads of copies of Soho Revue magazine. There seemed to be no article on the current exhibition, oh well.
There were probably a dozen people milling about by now. One of the guys looked like he may be the gallerist, he was busy talking to some guests. Said woman was busying herself behind the bar (she must have been worried we were after a free glass of wine …) and then proceeded to stamp everyone’s wrists, starting with a couple near us proclaiming that they were expecting to get busy later. She made a point of approaching everyone but us — we left.
Had she bothered to talk to us she would have realised we were on her guestlist, an artist and her agent looking for a gallery space to hire. The location may be perfect, but not the attitude. And I thought the days of private views being code for snobby parties against an arty backdrop were over. Very sad for artists to be reduced to wallpaper.
We were curious to see how busy they’d got and made a point of walking past Soho Revue once an artist talk we attended around the corner at Black’s had finished — crowds had swelled to two dozen. Glad I won’t have to scrub off any stamp ink.