Biography
After running for only five months, the Milch Gallery, London closed on November 24, 1990. Fifteen months later, it reopened as just Plain Milch, less than half a mile from its original home.
Canadian-born Lawren D.J. (David James) Maben (né Moskovicz) (1961-1994) founded Milch. On his arrival in London in 1985 he lived for a year in Notting Hill, before moving to 64-5 Guilford Street, off Russell Square. When the ground floor was turned into a gallery, one idea was to forge links between London and Cologne, hence the new name. Tamara Chodzko (now Dial), an American gallerist, also became part of Milch. She had worked at Bernard Jacobson and attempted to set up her own gallery in a disued shop in Woodstock Street, Mayfair, but only had one exhibition, Damien Hirst's, In and Out of Love : Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays (1991), featuring real butterflies, attached to canvases in pupa form which later hatched, flying, eating, sleeping and dying in the gallery.
Simon Patterson, known for his The Great Bear (1992), a London underground map in which station names have been replaced by names of people, was one of their first represented artists, along wirh Hamad Butt, who had a solo exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton and the architect (Belgo, Chalk Farm) and designer, Anand Zenz, who was shown at the re-opening exhibition, even though 31 mills had refused to weave the fabric with the words ‘fuck me, fuck me, oh fuck me’ for his suits.
