Galleries - July 2015

watercolour collaborations, is working with rather more established art world names. This part of Mayfair is proving hugely attractive to such galleries –Victoria Miro is just round the corner on Hanover Street, Gagosian have opened another branch not far away in Davies Street and Hauser & Wirth are just off Conduit Street. But the much older established galleries hang on in there vigorously too, most notably Annely Juda in Dering Street. The upper gallery here is one of my absolute favourite spaces in London; warehouse style and flooded with daylight, it makes everything look wonderful – currently the second of their two big summer Hockney shows, this one featuring his recent large and standard iPad prints from the series ‘The Arrival of Spring’. It’s back to the future again when you go out onto New Bond Street with an absolute stunner of a summer loan show, organised by Christie’s Post-war and Contemporary department in their huge (three floors), Christie’s Mayfair space, recently established as they put it “to look back at history from today’s perspective . . . to create museum quality exhibitions with strong curatorial values.” Entitled ‘Reflections on the Self: From Durer to Struth’, this show of artists’ self-portraits really doesn’t disappoint, starting off with walls of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, mixing them up with Belgravia’s current show of Carl Laubin’s architectural capricci and realist landscapes is on until 6 July to be followed by a major summer exhibition – Blue with iconic names including Matisse and Nelson Mandela. Maddox Street, with its villagey mix of cafés and restaurants and comparatively smaller shop fronts, is proving a particular magnet for new arrivals and Beaux Arts further down towards New Bond Street is, of course, another of these. For them it has proved a highly successful move out of Cork Street –the new, more varied space on two floors, proving very effective for the kind of work they show, particularly sculptors like Anthony Scott, Elisabeth Frink and, upcoming in September, Anna Gillespie. Meanwhile their current summer exhibition draws on a wide cross section of the gallery’s emerging talent and established stars. Walking up one of the small side roads leading out of Maddox Street into Hanover Street/Square one can hardly miss some of the other forces shaping the art-market round here –two huge, newish gallery spaces, Hus and Blain Southern, opposite each other and occupying prime positions in former showrooms. The former is showing a mixed roster of young international artists, the latter, currently with Francesco Clemente’s Indian 8 GALLERIES JULY 2015 MAYFAIR View With Westminster Council seemingly intent on turning the southern half of Mayfair – from Bruton/Conduit Street down to Piccadilly – into a high- end fashion hub, the art galleries which have made the area so attractive in the first place seem to have two choices – move south to St James’s which many are doing, or move north into the New Bond Street hub. One such arrival is the very progressive Belgravia Gallery in Maddox Street, run by Anna Hunter, who has also been one of the moving forces behind Brown’s London Art Weekend (3 to 5 July) run simultaneously with London Art Week (3 to 10 July). Like other smaller dealers who are not part of big chains – Gagosian et al – she is only too well aware, with rents rising rapidly, how vital it is to market themselves more effectively. Art fairs undoubtedly help but making people more familiar with a gallery’s permanent space, with events and weekend openings like this, are also a necessity. (Brown’s Saturday art tours continue on a monthly basis throughout the rest of the year). Maddox Street, with its villagey mix of cafés and restaurants . . .

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