Victoria Miro Gallery

The gallery in 2012

The Victoria Miro Gallery is a British contemporary art gallery in London, run by Victoria Miro.[1] Miro opened her first gallery in 1985 in Cork Street, before moving to larger premises in Islington in 2000[1] and later opening a second space in St George Street, Mayfair.

Locations

Cork Street

Victoria Miro opened her first gallery in Cork Street, West London, in 1985, where she became one of the principal dealers,[2] although the premises at 750 square feet (70 m2) were little larger than a studio apartment.[3] In the late 1980s, she opened a second gallery in Florence in Italy, but shut it in 1991 after the art market slump.[3]

Long waiting lists of collectors and museums developed to buy work from the galleries, and Miro reported that even Charles Saatchi, when he bought a Cecily Brown painting from her, "seemed pleased to get one."[3]

Wharf Road

In November 2000, the gallery moved to its present location in 16 Wharf Road, Islington, adjacent to the cutting-edge art area of Hoxton,[1] where it is housed in a two floor, 10,000-square-foot (930 m2), converted Victorian furniture factory, ten times the size of the Cork Street gallery.[1] Miro's co-director, Glenn Scott Wright, attributed the move to the "buzz" in the area, where Jay Jopling's White Cube gallery had also moved, and saw other galleries following suit, since rents in the West End of London were quadrupling.[1] She was described by Christie's curator, Gerard Goodrow, as "a leading figure in making the East End the center of contemporary art in London."[3]

A group show prior to the conversion of the building brought 4,000 visitors, which it would have taken the Cork Street gallery six months to attract.[1] The conversion architect, Trevor Horne retained some of the original features of the building, such as the worn staircase and rough roof beams, while the waste ground at the rear next to Regent's Canal was left to artist Ian Hamilton Finlay to regenerate.[1] The opening show by Thomas Demand was of paper and card reconstructions of photographs of interiors.[1]

The gallery's yearly turnover is in the tens of millions of pounds.[4]

The gallery represents Turner Prize winners, Chris Ofili and Grayson Perry; and former Turner Prize nominees Peter Doig (a former Tate trustee), Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Isaac Julien. Other artists, as of 2008, are Doug Aitken, Hernan Bas, Varda Caivano, Verne Dawson, Stan Douglas, Elmgreen and Dragset, William Eggleston, Inka Essenhigh, Barnaby Furnas, David Harrison, Alex Hartley, NS Harsha, Christian Holstad, Chantal Joffe, Idris Khan, Udomsak Krisanamis, Yayoi Kusama, John Korner, Tracey Moffatt, Wangechi Mutu, Alice Neel, Jacco Olivier, Tal R, Conrad Shawcross, Sarah Sze, Adriana Varejão, Suling Wang, Stephen Willats, and Francesca Woodman.[5]

The Upper Room by Chris Ofili was exhibited at the Victoria Miro gallery in 2002: it consists of thirteen paintings, each of a rhesus macaque monkey, installed in a purpose-built room designed by David Adjaye.[6] Adrian Searle, art critic of The Guardian, wrote that it was a work the Tate had to buy.[6] In July 2005, the Tate announced the purchase of the work as the centrepiece of a new hang at Tate Britain.[6]

St George Street

In 2013, Victoria Miro Gallery opened a second space in a converted bank office in St George Street, Mayfair,[7] designed by Claudio Silvestrin and executed by project architect Michael Drain.[8]

San Marco

In 2017, Victoria Miro Gallery opened an exhibition space in the former Galleria il Capricorno in a 17th-century building in the San Marco neighbourhood of Venice.[9]

External shows

In September 2002, the gallery was one of the eighteen cutting edge, art galleries with international reputations to be selected for The Galleries Show at the Royal Academy, an exhibition curated by Norman Rosenthal and Max Wigram to highlight the role played by galleries in an artist's creative progress, as well as putting work on sale and realigning the Academy with a greater involvement in current art.[10]

The gallery was one of the 118 galleries worldwide to be selected for the first Frieze Art Fair in London in October 2003, alongside other leading British galleries, White Cube and Gagosian.[11]

In March 2004, at New York's Armory Show, the gallery sold everything on the opening day; this included work by a new artist to the gallery and recent graduate, Raqib Shaw, whose first solo show in London of eighteen drawings and five paintings, stemming from the work of Hieronymous Bosch and priced up to $20,000, had previously sold out.[12]

In December 2004, at Art Basel Miami Beach, the gallery sold out a room of paintings by Suling Wang, who had not at that time had a solo show. The room was re-hung and sold out again.[13]

See also

Notes and references

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Husband, Stuart. "Go see... the Victoria Miro gallery, The Observer, 3 December 2000. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  2. ↑ "Gilbert & George—true pioneers of East End art, The Daily Telegraph, 31 May 2004, page 2 of 3. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Peterson, Thane. "Looking for Tomorrow's Artists? Follow Victoria Miro ", BusinessWeek, 21 February 2001. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  4. ↑ Duguid, Hannah. "It's show time: Meet the ambitious young 'galleristas' behind Britain's art boom", The Independent, 16 December 2007. Retrieved 23 April 2008.
  5. ↑ "Victoria Miro: Artists", Victoria Miro Gallery. Retrieved 29 April 2008.
  6. 1 2 3 Kennedy, Maev. "Tate buys Ofili's roomful of apostles", The Guardian, 20 July 2005. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  7. ↑ Jackie Wullschlager (27 September 2013), Financial Times.
  8. ↑ Coline Milliard (20 May 2013), East End Grandee Victoria Miro Returns to Mayfair 30 Years After The Opening of Her First Gallery on Cork Street ARTINFO.
  9. ↑ Anny Shaw (6 April 2017), Victoria Miro to open first overseas gallery in Venice The Art Newspaper.
  10. ↑ "Not the Summer Exhibition", The Daily Telegraph, 6 April 2002. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  11. ↑ "Market news: Howard Rutkowski and the Frieze Art Fair", The Daily Telegraph, 14 April 2003. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  12. ↑ Gleadell, Colin. "Contemporary market", The Daily Telegraph, 29 March 2004. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
  13. ↑ Gleadell, Colin. "Art sales: Miami hit by an art hurricane", The Daily Telegraph, 13 December 2004. Retrieved 22 April 2008.

Coordinates: 51°31′49.3″N 0°5′42″W / 51.530361°N 0.09500°W / 51.530361; -0.09500

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