About

L-13 Light Industrial Workshop and Private Ladies and Gentlemen’s Club for Art, Leisure and the Disruptive Betterment of Culture.

We Are Not

The L-13 Light Industrial Workshop is not a gallery, a publisher, nor do we represent artists. Neither are we a real Ladies and Gentlemen’s Club, a Light Industrial Workshop, and we most certainly are not an art collective.

We Are

Founded by artist Steve Lowe in 2003 – initially under the name the aquarium (2003 – 2006) then THE AQUARIUM L-13 (2006 – 2008) – the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop is a creative platform, spiritual home and technical epicentre for a small group of artists that Lowe has found himself working with – both in collaborative venture and by way of support for the individual artists. The L-13 HQ in Clerkenwell is also physical home to the Harry Adams studio, an 1825 Albion Press, The Patented Finger of God Painting Machine and a miniature poodle known as The Beast.

L-13 In Numbers

THE AQUARIUM L-13 took its name from the Zeppelin L-13 which bombed London in 1915, the “gallery” being based at one of the bomb sites. The captain of the Zeppelin L-13 bombing raid was shot down over Potters Bar in 1916 whilst piloting another craft, Zeppelin L-31. The address of the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop is also at number 31. The numbers 13 and 31 occur regularly in our editions and projects alongside the mystical number 23.

What We Do

We develop projects both ambitious and diminutive, publish books, make prints & other artwork editions, convert impractical artistic visions to reality, promote a playful polemic spirit, irritate and offend some delicate souls in the big bad world of culture and politics, and work with other galleries and organisations that exhibit and support L-13 artists.

How We Do It

We are almost entirely self-funded by making and selling our wares, although we once received Arts Council funding to help with a particularly broad project.

We try not to let money get in the way of doing what we want and over the years have become relatively expert at doing so.

Special Things

We like making special things at prices people can afford and will subsidise our own produce where we think necessary and appropriate. We also like to make and sell special things that cost lots of money for people who can afford it. The sale of such things helps us subsidise those less lucrative projects.

The Artists

The key artists currently active with L-13 are:

Harry Adams
Jimmy Cauty
Billy Childish
and
Jamie Reid

Other artists L-13 has worked with over the years have included

Pete Bennett
Neal Brown
Neal Jones
Jeanine Guidi
Mark Manning
Sexton Ming
STOT21stCplan
Geraldine Swayne
Charlotte Young

Our History

A full history of our activities can be found in the book about L-13 that has yet to be written. This book is somewhere in the pipeline but in the meantime please refer to our archive pages for snippets of useful and/or misleading historical and contextual information.