User:SugarBunBun/Pearl Alcock

Pearl Alcock (1934 – 7 May 2006) was a Jamaican artist and businesswoman who lived in London, England. She is best known for having been a bisexual outsider artist who created a safe space for members of the Brixton LGBTQ+ community to gather in the 1970s.

She left Jamaica in her twenties, moving to London, England, where she ran a dress shop, a café, and a popular queer shebeen. When her businesses failed following the 1981 and 1985 Brixton riots, Alcock discovered her artistic talent for creating abstract art from a variety of materials. Alcock’s artwork featured in two exhibitions while she was alive. Her work was posthumously celebrated at a year-long exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester.

= Life = Pearl Alcock, born Pearlina Smith in 1934, was raised in Kingston, Jamaica. She was married to a French-Canadian man, but left the marriage and Jamaica at the age of 25. Emigrating to England as part of the Windrush movement, she first settled in Leeds. Alcock supported herself by working as a maid and as a line worker in various factories.

In the 1970s, after saving roughly £1000, Alcock opened a boutique at 106 Railton Road in the Brixton area of London. Eventually, she turned the basement of her building into an illegal nightclub known as a shebeen. When interviewed, a regular patron of the club said Alcock “took no-nonsense" and "her prices weren’t exploitative, you could get a half-pint of Heinkeken for 50p.”

Alcock's friend, Dirg Aab Richards, described her as a "kind and generous" person who was "full of laughs" and remembered her being proud of her bisexuality.

In an effort to avoid violence and provocation by the police against her business and her customers, Alcock chose to stop selling alcohol in her shebeen. Within a few years, however, the consistent harassment became too much and she closed the nightclub permanently. She opened a café on the same street, at 105 Railton Road, but she closed this business too after the 1985 Brixton riots.

After her businesses closed, Alcock turned her focus to art. At the age of 50, she chose painting as her primary medium of expression and continued to paint until her death at the age of 72 in 2006. According to historian Milo Bettocchi, Alcock lived in the St. George's Residence Housing Co-Op, located across the street from her old shebeen, until her death. While well regarded in life by her community, her status as an activist and artist has continued to grow since her death in 2006.

= Work = In London, Alcock first found work as a maid. By the 1970s she had opened a dress shop on Railton Road in Brixton. Below the shop, she ran an illegal shebeen that was popular with the local gay community. She later opened a cafe on the same street in a building owned by her relatives.

Following the 1985 Brixton uprising, both her shop and her bar had failed. She found herself on the dole and unable to afford a birthday card for a friend, so she drew one using crayons and material from a package of women’s tights. On realizing she had a knack for drawing, Alcock is reported to have remarked: “I went mad scribbling on anything I laid my hands on. Friends admired what I had done and began to bring me materials to use, that is how I started.”

Alcock started with small pieces, but as her work gained more attention, she began creating bigger pieces. Alcock worked with a variety of materials that were close at hand such as “graphite, colored pencils, wax crayons, pastels felt-tips and acrylic paint.” Her work swayed between abstract pieces shown in galleries and commercial pieces, such as postcards, to sell under railway arches.

Her paintings fit into three categories: (i) narrative portraits (mostly without titles), (ii) flowers; and (iii) abstracts (critics consider these her most sophisticated works). A recurring theme in Alcock’s art was vibrant colors and dramatic patterns.

In 1989, Alcock’s work was included in the 198 Gallery exhibition of Three Brixton Artists: Pearl Alcock, George Kelly, Michael Ross. In 2019, Alcock was featured in the 1990 London Fire Brigade calendar, and she was posthumously the subject of a year-long exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester.

Alcock is remembered as an outsider artist. Monika Kinley, one of the country's leading advocates of outsider art, describes Alcock as "a visual poet". In 2005, Alcock’s work was included in Tate Britain's first exhibition of art shown under the term outsider art.

Despite her high regard in the context of outsider art, Alcock's work has been put up for auction more than once, but only one artwork has sold: "Thukela (Tugela) River”. The piece was purchased for $294.00 USD at Germann Auctions in 2012.

= Selected exhibitions =
 * 2019: Pearl Alcock, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester
 * 2005: Outsider Art, Tate Britain, London
 * 1989: Three Brixton Artists: Pearl Alcock, George Kelly, Michael Ross, 198 Gallery, London

= The Brixton LGBTQ+ Community = Alcock was a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community and could often be found at lesbian bars in Brixton. In the 1970s, she turned her basement into an unlicensed club (called a shebeen) that served as a popular gathering place for the LGBTQ+ community.

For the duration of its operation, Alcock's bar was Brixton's single gay bar. It was one of the few safe spaces in London for black queer men to drink and dance without facing racism from white queer patrons. She had few women customers, and most of her clients were gay black men, and many were from the Caribbean, though some queer white men also patronized the illegal bar. Around half of the black men were in mixed-race relationships, while the rest had black partners.

After Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979, a government effort to reinstate “traditional moral values” resulted in an increase of police raids on illegal operations. The police raids coupled with homophobic law (such as Section 28) made it difficult for Alcock to continue operating her shebeen. In an effort to protect herself and her customers from experiencing a violent police raid, Alcock elected to stop selling alcohol.

In 1981, Alcock made the decision to close her shebeen and moved to a neighboring building where she opened a café. The café became another haven for the LGBTQ+ community, an inclusive location where marginalized people could safely gather. In 1985, Alcock closed the café after four years of being open for business.

After Alcock’s death in 2006, her funeral was attended by several people from the LGBTQ+ community.

She was referenced posthumously in the 2019 Booker Prize winning novel Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Of Alcock, Evaristo wrote: "...woman-only bars were their hangouts; Fallen Angel, Rackets, the Bell, the Drill Hall Theatre bar on a Monday where the lesbianarati hung out, and Pearl’s shebeen in Brixton on a Friday night run by Pearl, a middle-aged Jamaican woman who stripped her basement of furniture, set up a sound-system and charged at the door."

= References =

= Further reading =


 * Kinley, Monika. "Monika's Story: A Personal History of the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection". Musgrave Kinley Outsider Trust, 2005

= External links = Pearl Alcock artwork