Gavin Lockheart’s latest show is in a Soho tea room

There is a term in cycling – ‘bonk’. It means to cycle too fast and powerfully at the beginning of a long race and, later, with nothing left in the tank, you simply cease to be able to keep pedalling. Perhaps you haven’t taken in the right nutrition, forgotten to drink plenty of water, or the ride is just too steep; there are many factors to contribute to a good ol’ bonk. Once you have bonk, as hard as you try, your legs won’t push you any further. Like cyclists, young artists have been making explosive breakaways into the art world, being hoovered up by large blue chip galleries, making record auction prices, and then the hype dies down and they bonk.

I thought about bonking as I climbed the stairs to enter into the painter Gavin Lockheart’s latest show, ‘You’re So Square’ on the first floor of the Soho patisserie Maison Bertaux.

Lockheart, now in his sixties, has been steadily producing work since the early 1980s. “There was never any expectation back then that as a British painter, you’d be showing anything until you were 40,” he tells me over a cup of strong black tea and while picking at a croissant. We are sitting at one of the few tables in the cramped upstairs tea room of the Greek Street tea room.

The show brings together a collection of work produced over the last few years all on square canvas. Like the room we’re sat in, the works are crammed together, hung salon-style. It’s a far cry from your standard white cube exhibition and I’m curious how it came about.

Tania, the proprietor of the space and self-declared “hooligan art dealer” met Lockheart a few months earlier when he attended a show of work by an artist friend. She was feisty and welcoming, and hit it off with Lockheart, who liked her ambition for the small space. They exchanged emails as Tania was keen to see his work, Lockheart sent through some images and a show was duly agreed.

A tea room slap bang in the middle of Soho is a quirky spot for an exhibition, and is indicative of the unconventional route Lockheart has taken as an artist. “Unlike a gallery, you don’t have to feel any pressure about how you’re looking at the work,” he explains. “I appreciate going to a gallery but I like how in here there can be a lot of images to look at.” The salon-style hang of the square, small-sized canvases allows the viewer, or perhaps customer, to flick between paintings, choosing what they are drawn to. “They’re small enough that there’s nothing that grabs you by the throat, and small enough that I could include lots of images.”

Soho has always been an artist’s haven. It was here in 1980 having just finished a foundation course in the midlands that Lockheart began his studies at Central Saint Martins (at the time, the school was located on Charing Cross Road). “It was a fantastic place to be for a 19-year-old, it was all very dark.” At St Martins, he met artists Peter Doig and Haydn Cottam, both of whom he is still close to today.

Lockheart credits Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ascent in the New York art world with giving him and his contemporaries the courage to put on their own group shows. At St Martins they discovered the perfect location to put them on. “There was a big hall in the middle of St Martins they only used for fashion shows, it was empty the whole time… so we said let’s put on shows there.” The pop-up exhibitions led to Doig getting a lot of attention, and his ascendancy to the heights of the art world began. Lockheart meanwhile took over a studio in Camberwell, and set about working on his paintings. A few years later, in 1991, he Cotton would move studios to Kentish Town, to an old abandoned church, where he would remain for the next 18 years.

Over that period, there was the odd solo exhibition and group show, alongside an art foundation grant in 1997 but Lockheart had to find other work to supplement his practice. This included a long stint as the principal men’s dresser during what has been called the “power years” of the London Coliseum, the period when the theatre put on the “most ambitious and the most brilliant plays with directors like Jonathan Miller.” It was an experience that Lockheart feels has shaped his paintings.

Lockheart explains that he doesn’t generally paint pure landscapes, “landscapes are just a situation for a figure to be in, it’s like a stage.” Looking at each painting on the walls, most contain a singular figure engulfed by a mesmeric, mystic landscape – isolated as if we have been cast into some dream. It is clear that the theatre has had a lasting impact on his painting.

I am curious about the square format of the canvases and suggest perhaps it is the influence of Instagram, to which Lockheart doesn’t disagree. Instagram has allowed Lockheart to build a new cult following, with collectors from all over the world contacting him about buying work. It is where I first came across his work, and how I came to produce a small exhibition of his work at my gallery, the Artist Room, in London last year. This show represents a continuation of Lockheart’s unconventional route, but it is a testament to Lockheart’s determination that he has never stopped producing work, even when few people have been watching. The paintings are getting more attention, and with this show, there will undoubtedly be more opportunities around the corner for an audience to discover his work. Lockheart hasn’t bonked. In fact he is only getting ready to break free from the peloton and I am excited to see a sprint finish.