Visitors at Sky Lab Gallery’s exhibition space at 57 E. Gay St. Credit: Courtesy of Trent Mosley
A week before its residents are evicted, Skylab Gallery will put on its final show.
The collective DIY arts and performance space, located at 57 E. Gay St., will host musicians Chris McKee, Fractured Eons, Stevie Zeven and FBK Friday at 10 p.m. for “Positive Reinforcement,” a show bidding farewell to a central fixture of Columbus’s Downtown arts scene since 1998.
Kevin Kennedy, the experimental electronic musician and DJ performing Friday under the moniker FBK, said what’s happening with Skylab Gallery and the surrounding Downtown area reflects issues of gentrification and urban renewal that artists in other parts of the city, including the Arena District and Short North, have faced.
“For example, there was a point in time where rent was really cheap in the Short North, and, you know, there were a lot of empty buildings,” Kennedy said. “So, what happened was the artist community actually took it over and started putting art galleries there.”
Skylab’s eviction, Kennedy said, follows a common trend of developers and property owners swooping in after artists have cultivated thriving communities in a neighborhood.
“After you make an area of the city attractive, then you get corporate interests, right? And I feel that that’s been a thing that’s happened a great deal,” Kennedy said. “Things get built, things get interesting, things then disappear, and it can be very sad.”
McKee, also a local DJ who frequently performed at the gallery’s Errant Forms parties, organized the final event. He said the show will primarily feature the musicians each performing live electronic music with hardware equipment — which includes “drum machines, synthesizers, sequencers all hooked up and in sync with each other, playing together.”
“With it being the last event at Skylab, I wanted to do it justice,” McKee said. “I’m sure there’ll be plenty of talk, plenty of grieving, but you know, it’s a party, and maybe it’ll just be the same vibe as any other night at Skylab, which is great. It’s always been a good time there.”
McKee said he first DJed at Skylab in 2009. Though the space and its programming have evolved over decades of cycling through artists, residents and musicians, McKee said Skylab has always maintained its experimental roots.
“I’ve seen performance art there. There’s been hardcore shows there, noise events. There’s always some quirky, outsider, experimental stuff, along with the gallery art they’ve always done,” McKee said. “It’s a DIY space, and it represents everything that it takes for a community to run that kind of space. All the different little scenes that all came about, maybe not directly because of Skylab, but they were formed in DIY spaces — a lot of which, unfortunately, have been shut down as well.”
Trent Mosley, a resident of the gallery, said the eviction — delivered Oct. 4 by the property’s management company Wallace F. Ackley — followed the expiration of the gallery’s yearly lease in May 2024, at which point it converted to a month-to-month rental.
“It’s not the first time they’ve tried to get rid of, or kick out, the residents of Skylab before,” Mosley said. “They’ve tried to do this multiple times in the past, but now that they changed the lease, they can essentially do that.”
Mosley said the issues stemmed from the landlord’s concerns about fire code violations, trash left in the hallways and graffiti on some of the walls in the space, which Mosley described as more of a “nitpicking” issue than a genuine concern.
“They’re saying fire code violations. But, I mean, [Andy Downing of Matter News] went and checked for us, you can check to see what violations the building has, and they’ll tell you,” Mosley said. “We technically don’t have any. There’s nothing major enough that we would have to leave.”
Mosley said despite the eviction, the outpouring community support has encouraged him to keep pursuing other spaces. According to Skylab’s GoFundMe, over $5,000 in donations have been raised in the pursuit of finding the gallery a new home.
“At this point, it’s just really finding a suitable place that can fit all the needs of what Skylab does,” Mosley said. “I intend to keep the space going for the most part, and to try and keep the legacy of it alive.”
McKee said the impact of Skylab Gallery losing the space it’s inhabited for over 25 years can be felt, not just within the city’s art and music scenes, but also in the history it leaves behind.
“It’s this thing that has been so important for Columbus. It’s another institution that’s just being taken away, just because somebody wants to do it,” McKee said. “That’s just part of what I am mourning: this lineage of Columbus dance music artists, along with plenty of other scenes and art forms. I think that’s important to know because nobody’s writing this down.”
For Kennedy, the loss of Skylab’s space is just another casualty of the city’s changing ways.
Kennedy — a Columbus native who briefly studied clarinet at Ohio State before leaving in 1993 to pursue music — said Skylab embodies Columbus as a whole, where “the only constant is change.”
“Columbus is a very transient city, even without the university,” Kennedy said. “You have a lot of people who come and go, and sometimes this is like a stop for people as they’re on their way to other places.”
Kennedy said he hopes to transmute that sense of loss into something more hopeful and uplifting for Friday’s show, which is the first and last time he’ll be performing at Skylab.
“I realize I’m going to be preaching the eulogy for the space, so we’re trying, we’re going to give the space a proper sonic send off,” Kennedy said. “I don’t call it a heavy burden; it’s an honor to be able to do something like this and, you know, to pay my respects to a place that so many people have enjoyed, danced in and have loved.”
Despite the loss of Skylab’s space, Kennedy said he’s a firm believer in the resilience of Columbus’ underground art scenes, and he remains hopeful for the future.
“Columbus has survived many things like this,” Kennedy said, referring to the crackdown on the city’s rave scene during the late 1990s. “I think that this is all cyclical, and I feel like the enterprising will always find a way. And I think that’s one of the things that has always happened in Columbus — the scene never dies; it evolves, just like Columbus does.”
Tickets for Friday’s show can be purchased at the venue the day of the event — $10 before midnight and $15 after midnight. More information can be found on the event listing on Resident Advisor.
