Kamio Artbar Grand Opening In Shoreditch

Friday night saw the grand opening of a new creative art space and bar in Shoreditch. Positioned in the Red Gallery on Rivington street, Kamio kicked off with a bang.

A collection of artists performed in the new venue’s underground stage area throughout the night, while some also hit the decks up stairs near the bar.

Even before you enter Kamio it has a pretty commanding presence, with a flurry of street art decorating the venues exterior walls (some of which were currently still in progress) the vibrant imagery continues inside with a number of canvas works (that are also available for purchase) displayed in the entrance.

A bar with low hanging plant life and coiled vines is illuminated by a sky light which effectively attracted all of the early bird patrons to an hour of free drinks. A pathway to the right of the bar leads off to a spacious garden area which again is pregnant with colourful street art.

The whole night seemed to be put together by the VICE clan with a large number of VICE and Noisey staff floating around (plus the brand name on the wristbands was a bit of a give away).

We spent most of the night down stairs (where it was loudest) enjoying live music from the likes of PIXX, Bless, Jelani Blackman, Gengahr, GFOTY and Steve XL. The sound system was heart palpitating-ly awesome and the stage lights seemed to get everyone in party mode pretty quickly.

Jelani seemed to attract the biggest crowd early on with a truly awesome fusion genre of music; busting out soulful lyrics over the top of an up beat high hat and snare slapping grime composition but then bringing out the saxophone to woo the audience like Bleeding Gums Murphy.

Kamio looks set to be one of the trendiest new clubs in town with some major potential to attract big music acts and host some really challenging creative shows.

Have a look at our full gallery of photos from the night here on our Facebook page!

Words, images and video by Locke Laurent
Check out our footage from the night!