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Pearl Alcock

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Name
  
Pearl Alcock


Pearl Alcock Pearl Alcock 1934 2006 Pearl 4 Acrylic on paper 41 x 29 cm C

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

Contents

Life and work

Alcock moved to London from Jamaica in her twenties. First finding work as a maid, by the 1970s she had opened a dress shop on Railton Road in Brixton and later ran a cafe and an illegal shebeen, popular with the local gay community, on the same street.

Following the 1985 Brixton Uprising both her shop and bar had failed and she found herself on the dole and unable to afford a birthday card for a friend so she drew one. Monika Kinley, one of the country's leading advocates of Outsider Art, describes her as "a visual poet". In 2005 her work was included in Tate Britain's first exhibition of art shown under the term Outsider Art.

Selected exhibitions

  • 2005: Outsider Art, Tate Britain, London
  • 1989: Three Brixton Artists: Pearl Alcock, George Kelly, Michael Ross, 198 Gallery, London
  • References

    Pearl Alcock Wikipedia