Beverley Knowles

Beverley Knowles

03 March, 2009
by: Tom Jeffreys

Notting Hill: Saturday, 4.30. I'm meeting art gallery owner Beverley Knowles and I'm running rather late. And I haven't slept in 36 hours and I'm completely lost. Oh west London, I just don't understand you! I'm beginning to get more than a little cranky, when I turn a corner and spy the pastel pink exterior of Beverley Knowles Fine Art. I've made it, and I'm only an hour late. Beverley is very welcoming and makes me some tea. I feel better.

Today is the last day of the current exhibition, so the gallery is abuzz with a calm and pleasant energy. As I enter Yanna Soares is dropping off her work for the next show (from what I can see through the packaging it looks great!) and before we begin, Susan Wilson, the curator of the current show, turns up for a cuppa. What a charming place this is. And so to questioning:

TJ: Can you tell me a bit about your personal background, and what you did before you set up Beverley Knowles Fine Art?

BK: I worked for a Bond Street art dealer called Anthony Mould. It was mainly eighteenth century but it also had a small handful of contemporary artists. I did that straight after I graduated, so first of all I was just a kind of dogsbody and I worked up from there. I learnt a lot from there. They'd find these really ancient canvasses at auction or wherever, clean them up, and find a Gainsborough or something! That's a bit of a simplification... I then did an MA in Art History at Goldsmiths. Afterwards I couldn't find another job that appealed, or that wanted me. So I set up my own gallery in 2002, just thinking, 'why not?'

TJ: And did you have a specific aim for the gallery when you started?

BK: No I didn't really. I was rather naive. I guess I'm still rather naive! I didn't really have a plan - I just thought, 'let's see what happens'. The advantage of that approach is that if you don't have too much of a plan then you're open to anything. And I learnt so much, and now I do have a kind of plan.

I've started inviting guest curators to work on exhibitions and they bring with them a whole load of artists that I probably wouldn't have thought of, or had the contacts with. They put their own slant on things. It's a great thing to do and I've really enjoyed doing that. And my personal interest has moved towards the more ephemeral work, so we're going to do a lot more of that kind of thing in the future.

TJ: Like Eleanor Wright's Brownfield? How did that come about?

BK: As with all these things in my experience it just came about through personal contacts. And I just happened to know someone who was supposed to be facilitating a show there – some Norwegian space balls or something! And then these Norwegian space balls didn't arrive, so he phoned me up and asked me if I could come up with something quickly. And I just thought Eleanor was so great that I asked her. We gave her completely free reign and just said, 'can you come up with something?'

And it was an amazing location, right next to Tower Bridge. In that context with all that glass and steel and the history, it really had to hold its own. And it did. It really had a great story and it worked. It was a wonderful opportunity that just came along - we just got lucky really.

(Click here to read Kate's review of Eleanor Wright: Brownfield.)


Eleanor Wright, Brownfield, mixed media, 2009

TJ: Why have you decided only to work with female contemporary artists?

BK: At Goldsmiths I did quite a lot of academic work, where it's quite a big thing, but then I go back to Bond Street and it's just this pin-striped world. It didn't seem to quite add up and I thought this would be a good thing to do. If you look at the statistics, women artists do seem to struggle more professionally. I'm not saying that's somebody's fault, it's just a point of difference and a point of awareness. There's no single factor - it's hugely complex.

SW: And you'd think it would have changed, but it really hasn't.

BK: In fact it might even have gone the other way. Do you remember the Guerrilla Girls poster in the late '80s, asking 'where are all the women in the Met?' And now there's even less women in the Met!

SW: It's partly women being less demanding, I think. The perception of women when they are demanding is more negative than that of men. And then simple things like when women artists have children, you need to have money for a nanny and everything, otherwise there simply isn't the time to carry on working. At that stage the men's career tends to take precedent.

TJ: And do you think that Beverley Knowles Fine Art has had an impact?

BK: Oh, yes I've changed the world!

SW: I think you have had an impact. Just in terms of this last show (Grove Women) there's been a lot of footfall, and I've had a lot of feedback about the whole show, and eagerness to come. You want that, and you want there to be debate and interest. Nobody has said 'oh why is it only women?' That hasn't been said at all.

BK: People say it sometimes: less now though than when I first started, or maybe I just don't take any notice anymore!


Yanna Soares, Círio de Nazaré III, silkscreen on aluminium, 100x60cm

TJ: When did you start Diary of a Thirty-Something Art Dealer?

BK: A couple of years back. Somebody suggested I do a newsletter and I had a look at the different kinds you could do. I just thought it would be good to waffle on about nothing for a bit, weave a bit of art in here and there.

SW: It works better than trying to ram it down people's throats.

BK: I just try to make it entertaining and keep it fairly bite-size. It appears to have a really good effect. It's amazing how many people read it and then go to the website. And I think it does well.

(Click here to read Diary of a Thirty-Something Art Dealer.)

TJ: Is there a specific set of criteria that you judge artists on?

BK: Oh, no. Maybe I should be much smarter about it, but if something's good and I like it enough then I try not to take into account whether I'm going to be able to sell it or not. I'm not very good at trying to second guess what people are going to buy anyway. When I have tried to do that it hasn't worked, and then you feel compromised and it hasn't made you any money, so that just really pisses you off! So now, if I really like it, then that's great.

TJ: What other London galleries do you admire?

BK: I really like Rokeby. I like things to work on a theoretical level, but I also like work to communicate in a more experiential way. Did you see WITH? It was amazing! That's what I like – when the boundaries are all so blurred that you don't even really know what's going on, but you know it's good.

(Click here to read Susannah's review of WITH at Rokeby.)

TJ: What projects are you working on that you're excited about?

BK: Well, we're moving out of here into a studio space to run it not as a gallery but as a private dealership. So the Yanna Soares exhibition is our last one here. I'm really excited about that – I think it's going to be a really positive change.

SW: How will that change what you do?

BK: It won't change the way we operate from a business point of view, but it'll change the way we're perceived by the outside world. What I'm doing is responding to the business as it grows. At the moment I spend so much time and energy and money putting the shows on, and actually that's not where the income comes from. Maybe I'll find that I miss this aspect, but I don't know.

TJ: But you're going to do more of the project-based work?

BK: Yes, there's going to be a project side of it. Elly's project on the Southbank was kind of a tester and that went really well, so we're going to take it from there.  But we only want to do one really good project per year, have one really good private view, get as much publicity as possible, and work with guest curators... Quirky, interesting stuff, but  I don't want to push it and make it happen too fast. I want to allow it to grow naturally.

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