Mugshots and selfies tell us little about the music, the atmosphere or the vibe
As Little Louie, the café by day, wine and cocktail bar by night, go-to place near the Elephant & Castle, plans to relocate, it will be Oscar Romp who provides the artwork for the walls in its last few weeks, leading up to the move, writes Michael Holland.
Oscar is legendary on the dance scene, recognised throughout Europe in clubs and at festivals for 30 years, seen sketching on the dance floor or up with the DJs, catching what he calls, ‘Unstill Lives’, ‘Dancescapes’ or ‘Clubscapes’.
And he is passionate about what he does: ‘Dancing’ is ‘drawing’ with the body. The dancer is the drawing tool. Drawing is a form of dancing on paper or canvas. It can be a live, visual ‘Jazz-Jam’ where the hand, the heart and the eye are equal participants… Clubscapes celebrate the music, the dancing, and the underground social world of Dance Club Culture… My images are about observing the scene on location, but they are also about feeling, and participating – and reflect my own committed involvement with music through dancing at UK Jazz Dance, Northern Soul, Funk and House Music clubs down the years.’
I was mesmerised. I thought of the ‘commitment’ and the years on dance floors he had put in.
Oscar stopped talking and there was that awkwardness, like the uneasy radio silence you sometimes get when one person waits for the other to speak. I snapped out of the trance-track he’d talked me into and quickly tried to think of another question, but Oscar was off again, bringing the beat back to save me. ‘I aim to capture the mood, spirit and atmosphere of a club event,’ he begins. ‘Smartphone ‘mugshots’ and ’selfies’ tell us little about the music, the atmosphere, dance-style or the vibe of any given event. I aim to reveal and express those aspects of experience that digital media, videos and cameras can’t reach.’
And, looking at the art, I can see it does make that world more real as it pulls you in. They move and sway with their own kaleidoscopic bpm, they pulsate like a bass line, they sparkle and flash, they, they… they dance.
There will be a huge number of Oscar Romp’s artwork on show at Little Louie, which will ‘freeze frame the rapture of the dance floor better than any camera could’.
What do you want visitors to Little Louie to see?
‘I hope that they recognise the experience evoked in my pictures – not in a factual, photographic way – but with imagination, and recognition of a shared experience.’
Everybody in the house say yehhhh!
Little Louie, 14 Ash Avenue, London, SE17 1GQ.
Sat 5 to Sun 27 Sept 2026
Website: https://littlelouie.london
