Sequins, sweat and theatre

When we hear the word ‘wrestling’, we usually think of the frantic and flamboyant spectacle of WWE.

For many Brits, however, wrestling was once a Saturday afternoon TV staple with the likes of Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Mick McManus and Kendo Nagasaki becoming household names in the ’70s.

That world is now being revisited in Atom Gallery’s new exhibition Wrestle Room, paying tribute to the sequins, sweat and theatre of British wrestling’s golden age.

It’s a piece of history that Mark Perronet, co-curator of Wrestle Room, describes as “pure escapism, a bit of showbiz nonsense, sweaty, working class glamour, fleshy pantomime, Saturday afternoon micro violence.”

One for wrestling fans and gallery-goers alike, the exhibition brings together more than 25 artists including Sir Peter Blake, Phill Jupitus, Heath Kane, Ryca, Luke Haines, Haus of Lucy, Donk, Carl Stimpson, Shuby, Villain and more.

The idea for the exhibition started when Perronet and fellow co-curator Matt Littler discovered that artist BLAM, who curated an earlier Atom Gallery exhibition, had designed the album cover for Black Box Recorder’s England Made Me featuring the iconic photo of Adrian Street – “a very camp acting wrestler of the 70s”, says Perronet – and his father at a pit head. The conversation quickly turned to wrestling when Littler mentioned he had previously met the mysterious masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki.

For Littler, the exhibition brings back childhood memories of watching the wrestling in his nan’s living room.

“My sister and I would sit and draw all the larger-than-life wrestlers on the floor, fuelled by fizzy pop and my Nan cheering on Big Daddy.” More than just nostalgia, he adds: “It’s such an odd brief period of culture that is worth looking back on now. There’s an obvious comparison to be drawn with the chaos of the current political climate; the pantomime of wrestling with its nonsense rules, random gimmicks and larger-than-life characters is a bit of a mirror to what’s happening in the world right now.”

It’s this “pantomime” that makes wrestling such a rich source of inspiration for artists, Perronet says.

“Peter Blake painted and drew a lot of fairground and sideshow acts and became fairly obsessed with Kendo. Toulouse-Lautrec drew and painted the dancers and strippers of Paris, Degas ballet dancers. They were all larger-than-life, colourful characters who were outside of normal society.”

Artist Michelle Thompson was similarly drawn to the theatrics of the sport: “Girls of Doom was inspired by a vintage wrestling magazine, where I also found the title. I love the drama and spectacle of wrestling and wanted to capture its over-the-top energy. I often use repetition in my work, moving between analogue collage and digital editing to create the final image.”

Nostalgia

For Dave Buonaguidi (Real Hackney Dave), the exhibition brings back memories of watching wrestling on TV.

“In those days there was no internet and no radio channel with sports news, so I would be on tenterhooks waiting to find out how my beloved Chelsea had done. I would watch the wrestling because it was all so theatrical and all my nervousness would disappear. Then on Monday morning in the school playground, we would pick a wrestler and have fights.”

His wrestler of choice was “always Jackie Pallo, because I was blond and I thought he was Italian, like me. He wasn’t – he was from Islington.”

On creating his print You Grunt, I’ll Groan, he says: “I found these original photos of wrestlers in the ’70s on eBay and it all came back to me. You grunt, I’ll groan. Smacks of the theatrical process of wrestling of the time. It’s also the title of Jackie Pallo’s book. And it’s a little sexy too.”

Artist Darren Riley, meanwhile, already had a collection of wrestler paintings in his studio. “I didn’t really know why I was painting them when I started, beyond enjoying making figurative art and being born in the ’70s, but clearly they were just waiting for a wrestling exhibition.”

Weirdly, halfway through painting the collection – three of which will feature in Wrestle Room – Riley remembered that he had been at school with the son of Colin ‘Bulldog’ Joynson.

“Still haven’t painted him yet, maybe I should see if he’s still with us.”

Riley’s process is deliberately loose, using gouache paints on large sheets of paper without sketching first.

“I paint the bare body parts first before adding the clothes, so this creates a pleasing distortion to my paintings that some people assume is a result of an inability to portray people accurately – this is only half true as my process is intended to find the happy accidents.”

Masked legend

A new limited-edition print pays tribute to Kendo Nagasaki, with the famously silent wrestler himself making a special appearance at the gallery on 10 October.

The exhibition also features prints from Sir Peter Blake’s Wrestlers set – a nod to Blake’s fascination with Nagasaki: he once said that had he not been an artist, he would have wanted to be the wrestler.

Now 84 years old, Nagasaki says it gives him “great pleasure” to be part of the exhibition, which brings him back to his early encounters with the art world through Sir Peter Blake and the Waddington Galleries. He describes the show as an opportunity to meet “a new generation of up-and-coming artists” and says he is “extremely flattered” to be invited.

“So, here’s to the future of art and long may it live!”

For Littler, getting Nagasaki involved was “a dream come true. He’s a true legend.”

For Perronet, meanwhile, it’s “enormously exciting! And a little bit frightening.”

Wrestle Room is on show from 10–31 October.

Find out more at atomgallery.co.uk/whats-on/wrestle-room.