Trundling along the peaceful streets surrounding Primrose Hill, I had expected to be stopped in my tracks by a behemoth: a structure of excitement and awe. After no such beast emerged and having got myself lost, I accepted that this was not going to be the case. Finally veering away from the main road, and subsequently leaving the mainstream in tow, I found myself loitering in a dark alley whilst illicit whisperings invited me to what might have been the entrance to the Cirque du Freak. Upon entering the building, it became clear that the labyrinthine structure of the Museum of Everything was not so far removed from the bearded-lady-toting carnival I had assumed.

An anti-gallery of sorts, it was not merely a collective bushel of Outsider works, but a simulated space of the psyche. The spectator is drawn through tightly packed corridors, shoved aside from overcrowded captions scattered amongst the walls, and invited to peer from around corners at objects that seem more fetish than artwork. Repetition, obsession, mysticism, the externalized mind; the museum houses the artifacts of those who embrace their constructs as means to their own, often functional ends. The selfsame basements and attics the objects were hidden in, and the mindscapes in which they were created, have become the contexts through which the museum has been constructed. A factory clad in canvases, a bunker filled with apocalyptic tensions, a chessboard of cinderblocks displaying small pen and ink drawings; this is both museum of the mind, and of the muse-object, evoking the odd, the bizarre and the different. As inspiration, they find themselves comparable to the Lubbock, the Ukiyo-e or even the mannequin, though as objects for fascination, they become anonymous images held together only through the theme of being ‘freaks’ for the viewing.

Until Dec 23

SAM LAKE