Gerry Carew

Opening a gallery

My ambition and decision to open an art gallery was distilling for many years, maybe it was in equal parts an act of faith and possibly quiet defiance! An independent art gallery isn’t usually opened for profit, status or ease. I believe I wanted to make space – for art that might not fit elsewhere. A gallery can be a shelter as much as a showcase, a place where creatives especially those outside the mainstream can feel seen rather than judged.  Older artists, neurodiverse artists, late bloomers, all creating work shaped by life and not necessarily by art school. 

A very simple reason for me was also that without this gallery something important would have nowhere to land.

Choosing the name for the gallery, At 6s & 7s is very simple really, it is the number of the original shop and house here on David Street but I think very apt. Not chosen for the phrase “At sixes and sevens” which can be described as being in a state of disorder, confusion or of things unresolved, where things are not neatly lined up.  But linked to a creative life, it suggests permission to start late, to make imperfect work and to change direction.  At 6s & 7s is more a stance, a way of living creatively that welcomes uncertainty when ideas arrive half formed and confidence comes and goes. It’s where we accept life interrupts and age reshapes priorities. But I’d also like to think that the name has a certain warmth and humour about it and that it doesn’t dramatise chaos but accepts that to be at sixes and sevens is not a failure of creativity but is more the condition of it.