Pearl Alcock at the Whitworth

Pearl Alcock at The Whitworth, Manchester, 18 May 2019–12 January 2020, free entry - Visit now

Arriving in the UK from Jamaica in 1958 with £5 in her pocket as part of the Windrush generation, Pearl Alcock moved to Brixton to realise her dream of opening a boutique dress shop on Railton Road – an area famous for connecting with London’s LGBTQ+ community. Following the Brixton riots in the early 1980s, trade in the café ceased and Alcock was forced onto the dole. A loved member of her neighbourhood, below her shop, she ran a ‘shebeen’ – an illegal drinking club for her friends, and popular with the local black gay community, and she later opened a café on the same street. Unable to afford a birthday card for a friend, she made one instead. This simple act sparked an outpouring of creativity that lasted her entire lifetime, as she realised her ‘visions’ and ‘moods’ in the form of drawings and paintings. These abstract tangles of colour and texture caught the attention of Monika Kinley and Victor Musgrave who purchased a number of works for their collection of ‘Outsider art’ – now part of the Whitworth’s collection and displayed in this exhibition together for the first time.