Space 1026 make a show of 2021 with past and present members like Adam Wallacavage, readying its first foray into television and the virtual stage.
Ever since its 1997 start, Space 1026, Philadelphia’s globally renowned, most innovative, collective-based graphic-design workshop, gallery, and alterna-performance space, has been on the move. Even when it was deeply ingrained and rooted to Chinatown’s Arch Street and its multi-media arts scene until its 2018 endgame on Arch, Space 1026 sizzled, vibrated and raced ahead into the future-forward. Magnet magazine, the Fabric Workshop and the Trocadero were forever an equal part of that same firmament until they weren’t.
Endgame because the original space at 1026 Arch Street was sold in April of 2018. It was packed up, and shipped farther up North, and relocated to 844 North Broad Street. Blocks away from the Met Philadelphia. With its large garden location at the new joint, everything from outdoor exhibitions and garden parties and barbecues were being planned. With the hopes of going fully Space 1026 operational in September of that year. “Space 1026 helped change the Philadelphia art landscape,” Space 1026 cofounder, fellow artist and sketch comedian Andrew Jeffrey Wright once told me about his co-collective and the comic-graphic work for which the group has been most acclaimed.
Of course, Covid came and is still here, throwing some of Space 1026’s plans into disarray. Now, however, John Lawrence and his crew of makers and shakers are preparing a next phase geared toward the quarantined and the locked-down, even when we’re free to roam about.
Along with busying themselves in monthly First Thursday opportunities with other local galleries for live tour with Philly’s Venture Cafe in its virtual networking space, Remo, Space 1026 is readying its first foray into television and the virtual stage with SpaceTV, the Art Shopping Network (ASN) and its new Home Shopping show.
Starting officially in April by premiering episodes, airing Thursdays at 7 PM ET on Twitch and Instagram, what they’re calling a “boutique cyber experience” will connect artists and audiences, and buyers, with an eye to browse, laugh and shop. All while “reveling in the familiar dashes of personality that make Space 1026 the immersive, zany, sincere, and raucous place many have come to know it as.” With Space 1026’s beloved, usual hostess-with-the-mostest “comedian, artist and self-proclaimed ACME Supermarkets heiress Rose Luardo oozing hopped-up Lisa Rinna realness with some John Waters razzle-dazzle to boot.”
While I will have more on this blessed event as it unfolds, you still have several days left to spy one-time, long-time, all-time Space 1026 artist, photographer and chandelier maker Adam Wallacavage’s AFTER FOREVER. A solo exhibition of surreal sculptures by the scion of South Broad Street and the darling of the New York Times’ Design section. Curated by James Oliver, the AFTER FOREVER exhibition at HOT•BED (on the 2nd floor of 723 Chestnut Street) present “sculptures in an immersive fantastical environment from two ongoing series, Octopus Chandeliers and Kitsch Collaborations, And uncovers the intricacies of Wallacavage’s practice and gives a closer look into the artist’s unrestrained techniques.”
Oooh, that sounds fancy. The exhibition will be open to the public through March 6, 2021.
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