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Class notes
Concordia Merchant Taylors’ School
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Milk and Cookies Gallery
Studying art at Merchant Taylors’
had a huge impact on my outlook of
the art world and how I imagined our
gallery to be. I set up Milk and Cookies
Gallery with fellow OMT and best
friend, Thomas Petrides. We both learnt
a lot from the school’s Art Department
– it was always very welcoming, and
we would often find students who
didn’t necessarily study Art getting
on with paintings during lunch break.
However, this inclusive approach was
distinctly different from the art world
we were exposed to – a closed and
secretive community.
After completing our Masters in
Modern and Contemporary Art from
Christie’s Auction House, Thomas
and I decided to create a gallery brand
that was young, exciting, affordable,
and most importantly inviting to all
age groups. The most difficult part
was creating an identity, a brand that
would separate us from other galleries
in London, and one that could reflect
our aims as a gallery. The name, Milk
and Cookies Gallery, is both playful and
somewhat childish, a stark contrast to
the stiff conventions of the traditional
gallery. Nevertheless, the name had to be
able to reflect the nature of the artworks
exhibited, and thus we decided to focus
specifically on artists who use humour to
convey their artistic perspective.
After several months of building
the brand, we held our official launch
exhibition in February 2015 with a solo
show by our artist Super Future Kid,
titled ‘Psychedelic Tumbleweed’. The
launch was a one-day pop up exhibition
on Euston Road attracting over 450
people in the space of three hours whilst
simultaneously being broadcast to an
audience of 280,000 viewers of Sky Living
HD’s new reality series ‘Desi Rascals’ that I
am also part of.
People of all ages and different levels
of experience with art attended, and were
greeted at the entrance with cookies for
canapés and milkshakes in champagne
glasses. The quirky brick walled space
with dark archways was perfect for the
starkly contrasting colours of Super Future
Kid’s paintings. With a live DJ set present
and the artist mingling with the audience,
there was a great atmosphere. The
exhibition was also very successful, with
four of the seven original paintings selling
on the evening along with numerous
prints.
Shmoyel Siddiqui (2004-2009) and Tom
Petrides (2002-2009) have set up a new
art gallery business called Milk and Cookies
Gallery. Shmoyel writes of how the idea was
developed and their first exhibition