DONT WALK WALK
Deal’s DONT WALK WALK gallery is a treasure trove of art with heart that doesn’t take itself too seriously
IMAGES: ELLIOTT HANSLIP
Striped deckchairs, colourful beach huts and endless pictures of Deal Pier at sunset… this isn’t.
At the cynically proclaimed ‘wrong end of town’, the DONT WALK WALK Gallery is proving worthy of an international journey for art fans.
Opening just three years ago, the space has turned far more heads than was perhaps expected, especially as its name was cheekily based on whether locals and visitors would bother trotting out of the high street.
But far more than just self-deprecating wordplay, the name and ethos of the gallery points to owner Neil Horenz-Kelly’s passion for three elements: humour, counterculture and New York.
A fluorescent sidewalk light hangs in the gallery, replicating the streets of the Lower East Side of Neil’s beloved Big Apple.
“When I had a shared studio in Deptford, one of the artists, Kelder Storm, had a very cool ‘Dont Walk Walk’ sign up in the gallery. I wanted to buy it off her, but there was no way she was parting with it,” says Neil.
“It was always in my head that if I was ever going to do something like a gallery, I would call it that. Believe it or not, my formative years were spent break-dancing and being really into early hip hop. New York was a part of the fabric of my youth.”
Some 20 years on and Storm’s provocative Americana-style work is now hanging in DWW and even had a solo show at the gallery back in winter 2019. But, as part of a 400-strong movement of artists in Deptford, Neil was on the other side of the canvas, so to speak. From studying art therapy and selling his work to the likes of Johnny Depp and Tracey Emin, through to being made redundant and becoming a labourer, Neil’s career has had some serious peaks and troughs.
And it is those stories that light up the carefully curated walls of DWW.
“It was a series of incidents that led to the opening of the gallery,” says Neil. “I was lecturing at the art college in Canterbury and got made redundant. My third child was born that same week, so there was pressure.
“A mate gave me a job painting this house in Kingsdown and I was sitting outside reflecting on what I was going to do. The guy I worked for was extremely funny and he said to me ‘the last thing I need is a middle-aged unfit guy working for me, I need a 19-year-old. Why don’t you go and do something you’re fu*king decent at and open an art gallery. He was trying to offload me basically, but he had seen this building. I made the enquiries and overnight I was in.”
Calling in favours from his old artist friends, the walls were populated virtually overnight in what Neil describes as a ‘sh*t or bust’ situation. And thus DWW was born.
IMAGES: ELLIOTT HANSLIP
FINDING THE FUNNY
Neil will tell you that, while his love affair with abstract oil paintings under the pseudonym Ned continues to this day, it was once he looked back at his upbringing in Dover, creating work such as Shit Picnic – depicting a family outing to a field under an electricity pylon – that he found a new voice as both an artist and latterly a gallery owner.
“It was conceptual work with humorous undertones. I would paint pictures of prisons, celebrate the ordinary and the mundane and use them as key things. My thesis was Art Humour in the Everyday. It’s something I really believed in.
“It’s the same in music: look at The Smiths, the Arctic Monkeys and Pulp, they have that way of talking about the vernacular and where they’re from. Such fantastic narratives with a thread of black comedy. That fascinates me as a way of documenting history. How we see humour in the situations we find ourselves in. Art has an important message in doing that.”
Photography, print, painting and sculpture are matched with decks, records and props at DWW. The punky in-your-face ethos is strong.
IMAGES: ELLIOTT HANSLIP
“It’s all intentional, it’s an organised chaos,” explains Neil. “Even I feel uncomfortable walking into galleries, I hate the starchiness. You feel like you’re being watched, that someone is judging you, to see if you can afford the work, or intellectually to see if you understand it.
“Get the music on, get a smelly candle on, put some random things in it and stimulate all the senses, try and dispel that myth that stops people visiting them.”
The household names adorning the walls simply cannot go unnoticed, neither can the fact that those same names are far more revered in another line of work. Jim Moir – better known by his stage name Vic Reeves – is now a neighbour to the gallery. What’s more, he has work for sale also.
“... he sent me some images of Jimi Hendrix playing guitar to grannies with Mash Potato hair. And he said ‘Do you want to sell these?’. I was like ‘Hell yeah!’”
“It was bizarre how it all happened,” says Neil, who missed Jim calling by a handful of times before the two finally got chatting only to realise they had lived in the same flat in south-east London, some 15 years apart.
“That was so strange. And I had met him previously at a show in Folkestone, and so there was a bit of connection there. He said ‘Do you wanna put some of my work in here?’. Of course!
“He was trying to connect with the community here in Deal. There are other galleries, but they kind of focus more on the local work you’d expect to see in a seaside town perhaps. I had mentioned the gallery had punk-rock ethics, and all the work he has ever done has that. He said the best work he has ever done is done quick.”
Neil was invited to the private view of one of Jim’s art shows in London, which sounds like walking into the who’s who of the UK comedy circuit.
“I saw this big ploom of black fur getting out of a Hackney cab. It was Noel Fielding. I had a few lubricating glasses of fizz and thought ‘I’ve got to have a chat with this guy!’.
“I told him about the gallery and that I was showing some of Jim’s work. A few weeks later, Noel started following the gallery on instagram and he sent me some images of Jimi Hendrix playing guitar to grannies with Mash Potato hair. And he said “Do you want to sell these?’. I was like ‘Hell yeah!’”
DWW and Noel have been working together ever since, even hosting a show during Halloween, while Jim’s work, including his musically-themed speed drawings and a number of his TV show props, have come through the gallery.
“It was such a staple part of my upbringing and then suddenly I’ve got all these props in my garage that I have seen used in shows before… it blew my mind,” says Neil.
Of course, the extra notoriety has led to an increase in attention on the gallery, with a social media following of more than 24K, as well as the odd TV camera crew. But Neil is happy to confront the cynics.
“People ask me if I would actually show Noel’s work if it wasn’t Noel Fielding, and actually, yeah I would. Noel is a colour wasp, his command of colour is just amazing.
“Picasso famously said he spent his whole life trying to paint like a child, and actually it’s an incredibly difficult thing to be able to be free, and to not worry about the opinions of other people to stop you.
“Likewise, when Jim does his line-drawings in charcoal, it is someone who is skilled and confident. Some people will say ‘Oh I could do that”. Yeah, all right then, give it a go mate.”
With the gallery’s reputation continuing to grow, so has the list of artists wanting to get wall space, with a number of renowned street artists putting their work forward.
“They felt a bit perturbed when I told them I don’t actually specialise in street art. It’s quite weird saying no to those people because, commercially, I probably could have made a good amount of money out of it, but I’m holding on to something here that I’m really passionate about.
“I really like my Robin Hood mix of merry men and women and emerging talent. There’s something very exciting about it. I haven’t got people in here just because I know they’ll sell – I love their work and can passionately talk about it. I don’t think I could represent somebody if I didn’t really have a connection with their work.”
Neil quotes a local Australian taxi driver as a reference of his pride in DWW: “You know what, you’ve got it right here, bro. You’re not on the high street, and everybody who comes in the shop feels like they’ve discovered it. Hold on to that.”
There is a twinkle in the eye when Neil starts explaining the story behind each piece in the little backstreet gallery in Deal. He has created that rare gem, a place where really crazy things really happen.
“There are some phenomenal stories that have occurred within this space in its first three years. The reach of the gallery blows my mind,” he says. “I had 10 years in London, the land of dreams, and I met nobody. I think I saw the lead singer of Texas once. But that was it.”
Insta: @dontwalkwalkgallery
Info: www.dontwalkwalkgallery.com