Melissa Kitty Jarram x Doyenne – Exhibition Focus

03/09/2018

Issue 2’s featured artist Melissa Kitty Jarram combines forces with the mighty Doyenne Skateboards of Scotland for an art exhibition and collab launch at Assembly Point in Peckham, London. Free booze was provided by the legends at Canopy Beer.

See below for our focus and some words from Melissa Kitty Jaram.

Buy Melissa’s prints HERE and Doyenne’s delightful merch HERE.

Melissa Kitty Jarram x Doyenne Skateboards

 

MKJ: We really have instagram to thank for this show coming together; I had been meaning to put on an exhibition for the past year and then I stumbled across Doyenne on the gram and we started fan girling each other.

I really loved everything that they represented and how closely they worked with artists. They had just done their first collaborative show with Erin McGrath, which went really well and suggested that we could do one too, then we met for the first time at the Pushing Boarders event and got the ball rolling.

 

The work I made for this show was based on a reflection of everything that Doyenne stands for: “We support all the minorities including women, LGBT community, POC and people with disabilities, aiming to create a bigger space for them within subcultures, specialising in skateboarding”.

 

I believe in what they’re doing, and above all that it’s working. I’ve been caught up in skate culture since I was a kid because I lived in a small town with nothing much better to do; you were either a chav or hung out with the skateboarders (chuckles). The best thing about it is that it’s so immersed with art of all kinds and so social. Everyone is genuinely so sound and down for getting involved in things and supporting each other so it really is a space that creates friendships and empowerment and all this is just what we need in a world where most people suffer from extreme anxiety of some kind.

 

The show was at the Assembly Point Gallery in Peckham, on for one night only. Big shout out to everyone who came and all those involved: my little brother Richard who wrote me a genius mathematical formula that allowed me to hang the work perfectly, Assa Ariyoshi for helping to set up and take down, i-five distribution for printing the decks, Canopy Beer for supplying booze, Sam Gosling of Ballroom DIY for building the mount boards for me, and all the doggos who came (I’ve heard that the canine colour field consists mostly of yellows, blues and violets so sorry if you couldn’t see the work properly but thanks for coming).

I am hoping to work on future collaborations with Doyenne, we are mates now so let’s see what happens in the future but I’m down for pretty much anything.

Buy Melissa’s prints HERE and Doyenne’s delightful merch HERE.