It’s August 1988, 4am, Saturday night. You’ve made it to the warehouse. A last minute call to an answer phone followed a flyer tip-off, divulged the secret location for what they’re now calling an ‘illegal’ Acid House rave.
Dozens of kids, high on the prospect of a good time to be had, crammed into buses and ferried to the huge, run-down disused warehouse here in East London.
The scene hits hard as you file in. Cheers, shouting and thumping music fill the massive space. Dancing, jumping, writhing bodies everywhere. The air thick with the atmospheric, trippy combo of dull industrial lighting, coloured lasers piercing the smoke, pounding rhythmic beats, a forest of hands waving to the music, colour, noise, energy. It’s hot. You’re buzzing. On a high. Surrounded by friends and love. Love, friends, a sense of coming together, a rejection of the mundane and depressing. Hours of pure joy and release ahead of you. Lost in the music, the love, the heat, the noise, the bodies.
Bang! Doors fly open. A raid. You’re jolted out of your trance, there’s shouting, panic, the music stops. Police and DJs both fighting to be heard over the crowd. Instructions and rejections lost in the chaos. You see organisers frantically stuffing a case with money, flyers, evidence, hiding it from the authorities in the dark corners of the crumbling beams of the building.
The night is shut down, thousands of people ‘moved on’.
Fast forward 34 years. That case is found. A time-capsule from ‘88, evidence of a night, a period of time in the lives of the warehouse ravers. Today, it takes centre stage in the highly anticipated new exhibition, Ravers Of The Lost Art featuring artist TBOY, along with 4 of the best urban and street artists of our time.
DO NOT miss the preview. Click HERE to book
RAVERS OF THE LOST ART