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The past year has seen a whole host of new gallery openings and expansions. Here are the amazing new spaces you may have missed.
Forget the mainstream, Soft Opening is a truly underground art gallery. Literally: it’s actually physically underground, occupying a window space on the Piccadilly Circus tube station concource. It’s open 24 hours a day and is now on its second show, this one featuring lush, fashion-influenced photography by Theo White.
Piccadilly Circus.
That old Wilkinson space in the East End isn’t going to waste, though, it has been taken over by Stuart Shave, whose Modern Art gallery in Old Street has been a London stalwart for years. Now he gets to take advantage of some seriously big rooms and Vyner Street avoids dying completely for another year.
Vyner St.
Hackney Wick used to be cheap and full of artist studios, now it’s becoming just another newbuild hellscape. Arebyte was there long before it became the land of breweries and yuppies, though, and has followed the creative tide away down the river Lea to a placed called London City Island. Which is also a new development, but one with an appetite for some creativity. A bit out of the way, but where better to let experimental art bloom?
Botanic Square.
Starting out as artist studios in Peckham with a gallery project attached, The Sunday Painter has quickly outgrown its South London roots and become a serious art world baller. Its impressive Vauxhall space is easy to get to, ambitious and a bold statement of intent, starting out with shows by artists like Leo Fitzmaurice and Cynthia Daignault.
South Lambeth Rd.
Saltoun has been celebrating largely experimental feminist art for years now, but was always a bit isolated with his Fitzrovia space. This new Mayfair gallery puts the amazing art of people like Valie Export right alongside ultra-high end galleries like David Zwirner, Thaddaeus Ropac and Sprüth Magers.
Dover St.
This East End gallery – with a space on, you freakin’ guessed it, Herald Street in Bethnal Green – has gone ultra swank by opening up a new gallery on Museum Street, just down the road from the British Museum. It’s a little bigger and definitely way more impressive than its other space but still has the same focus, opening with a tidy show by Turner-nominee Michael Dean. ν
Museum St.
Formerly one of the head honchos of the enormous Wilkinson Gallery on Vyner Street, Amanda has struck out on her own with a new, neat little Soho space. It’s less grand than the old one, but it’s way better located and something about condensing everything down into a smaller space just seems to work for shows by her stable of artists, which includes Phoebe Unwin and the brilliant Joan Jonas.
Brewer St.
Find loads more brilliant galleries to visit right here.