Feature: The Debut Solo Show of Nancy Fouts

Published: 17 June 2010
by FIONA GREEN

I CAME out of Mornington Crescent station to a blinding flash! There before me was a giant white rabbit, with clock, hat, coat tails. It couldn’t be! He beckoned – I followed. Round the corner he ran faster and faster. 

Down Eversholt Street, left into Oakley Square… I couldn’t keep up, but as I pursued him, I noticed the most curious people everywhere, in masks, top hats, DayGlo shoes and wigs, all hurrying in the same direction. 

It was a brilliant summer evening. Eventually I saw him vanish into a church vicarage. Up the steps I went too. Through a veil of silver mirrors, I managed to make out an innocent budgie perched on the element of a domestic electric fire and trapped behind the grill; he sent a shockwave through me. 

I noticed how on every available surface was a witty reference that toyed with my sense of reality. Here a Virgin carrying Sainsbury’s shopping bags, there a knight on skis. Floating above all, a toy galleon complete with sails: the wings of a crow. 

Music was supplied by a wind-up Singer sewing machine. Every­day, functional objects seen in a dif­ferent context; a glitter­ing array of images, colours, textures to taunt and tease my senses.

Nancy Fouts had always been trouble! Provocative, playful, witty, sharp and tempestuous, with a mind like Pandora’s Box. American by birth, Nancy found a home in London. When she was my neighbour, you never knew what might happen next. One Christmas, the front of her house – now appropriately Guy Ritchie’s recording studios – was inflated to make a giant pudding, another year an ice cream appeared stuffed, upside down, on the railings (it’s still there). Now she lives at The Old Vicarage in Oakley Square, where her Debut Solo Show is housing her collec­tion of curios­ities. If you too want the experience of a lifetime, go – go now! Who knows? You too might catch it there.

l The Debut Solo Show of Nancy Fouts, The Old Vicarage, 52 Oakley Sq, NW1, until June 25, Tues- Sat 12-4pm, or contact will@ murmurart.com