Focus on: Fitzrovia

Focus on: Fitzrovia

21 February, 2012
by: Tom Jeffreys

In the first in a new series, Tom Jeffreys takes a stroll round the galleries of London's latest art hub – Fitzrovia.

The area
After a month-long embargo, it was finally announced yesterday that Haunch of Venison are to open a second London space this March, in Fitzrovia. The news means that the gallery, who are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year and have been owned by Christie's since 2007, join the likes of Gagosian, White Cube, Sadie Coles and Hauser and Wirth on the list of galleries with more than one space in London. It also means that the attention of the art world is shifting firmly to Fitzrovia, that strange little area of town sandwiched between Oxford Street and the Euston Road.

But Haunch of Venison are not the only ones. February also sees the arrival of two other galleries in the area – Bartha Contemporary, previously based in Notting Hill, and Carroll / Fletcher, a brand new space set up by Jonathon Carroll and Steve Fletcher. These three new arrivals join an ever-increasing number of Fitzrovia-based contemporary art galleries: from big hitters like Pilar Corias and Stuart Shave to less high-profile names like Art First, Rosenfeld Porcini and Regina Gallery.

The centre of the Fitzrovia art scene is undoubtedly Eastcastle Street, which runs from Regent Street in the west (where Getty Images Gallery lies) to Newman Street in the east, roughly parallel to Oxford Street. This street (largely unprepossessing – apart from the glorious Victorian façade of the Capel Bedyddwyr Cymreig) is home to a host of galleries – five at the last count, rising to seven when Caroll / Fletcher and Haunch of Venison arrive. As Cork Street comes under threat from avaricious property developers, the influential names move away from Vyner Street, and Redchurch Street gets taken over by international fashion brands, Eastcastle Street is emerging as an important new destination for art lovers.

But, a note of caution. As we've seen in both Shoreditch and Peckham, first come the galleries, then come the developers. Whilst Fitzrovia may be enjoying something of a renaissance, it won't last for ever. The massive Royal Mail depot is mooted for sale and redevelopment; whilst earlier this month, Westminster Council approved plans for a massive mixed use development on the site of the former Middlesex Hospital. The scheme – proposed by a consortium that includes, oddly, an insurance company and a failed Icelandic bank – comprises three unutterably vile glass buildings, between nine and eleven storeys tall. Currently the hoardings are plastered in images from the Fitzrovia Photography Prize organised by Diemar/Noble, that claim to champion the area's diversity of character. Given what is taking place behind these hoardings, this is a laughable little fig-leaf. As so often, short-sighted greed will blot out the sun that currently shines so gently on Fitzrovia's charming little streets.


See our Focus on Fitzrovia map in full.

The walk
Thankfully, for the moment, the area is still delightful. I start my afternoon of Fitzrovia artiness at David Roberts Art Foundation, a short stroll from Great Portland Street tube station. David Roberts makes his dollars through property development (one wonders what he makes of the Middlesex Hospital scheme) and spends them on art. He opened the Foundation back in 2008 at 111 Great Titchfield Street in order to champion new artists and curators, but apparently the two-floor space is too small, and a large Camden space complete with artists' studios is on the cards. This though is a strange sort of gallery, with unusual brushed metal floors, but the current show – abstract painted structures by Lydia Gifford – works well. There's a focus on the material and texture which lends weight to Gifford's style of precariously balanced Minimalism.

Turning left out the gallery, I make my way over to Rollo Contemporary. Run by Philippa Found, Rollo has been based here since 2008 and packs a real punch despite its small size. In the past I've seen brilliant paintings here by Nadine Feinson and Andrew Hollis, but the gallery has really made its name through three-part travelling exhibition The Body in Women's Art Now, the last part of which is on when I enter. On show are a host of video works and virtual reality explorations that subvert the traditionally macho world of the first-person computer game, and it's probably the hotly hyped Princess Belsize Dollar who steals the show.

Travelling south down Cleveland Street takes me over Mortimer Street and onto Newman Street, home to my next port of call, Paradise Row. Founded back in 2006 by critic Nick Haworth, Paradise Row upped sticks from Bethnal Green to their lovely new Fitzrovia gallery in 2010. The space is truly fantastic, one of the finest in the area – with a rough-hewn floor of wood and concrete that adds an East End edge to the heart of central London. Unfortunately their shows rarely do much for me, and this one – a group show that revolves around a loose definition of 'drawing' – is no different.

From here it's a short walk to the super-chic Alison Jacques gallery [pictured, top left], designed by Mike Rundell and Associates and opened in 2007. Jacques is probably best known for her work with the estate of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as representing contemporary artists like Ryan McGinley and Catherine Yass, who has a massive video-installation at the gallery on the day I visit. It's a visually stunning paean to the incredible Royal Sovereign Lighthouse, off the south coast of England, but it's little more than that. Is it, as Rightness of Wayward Sentiment asks, “enough for an artist to do little more than document and present unexplored places and spaces”? I'm not sure.

And now for the final gallery of the day: one of my favourites in London, TJ Boulting. Formerly located on Redchurch Street and known as Trolley, the gallery moved to Fitzrovia at the tail-end of 2011. The new premises are beautiful – clearly a lot of work has gone into renovation since I last visited on launch night – and housed in a Grade I* listed building, just opposite Josh Lilley, on the corner of Riding House Street and Candover Street. Above the entrance, in elegant green and gold mosaic tiles, it reads “TJ Boulting & Sons, Gas & Electrical Engineers, Estd 1808” [pictured, top right]. Hence the new name for the gallery.

Inside, the ground floor is a kind of office for publishing company Trolley Books, the space dominated by an amazing elm table made by Robert Pinnock. Down the old staircase and the basement space is a beautiful combination of high ceilings, original parquet flooring and clean white walls. The current exhibition is a solo show for Colin Glen, whose thoughtful, painstakingly produced drawings fuse the tangled complexity of found wire objects with a clean, minimalist aesthetic. They're subtle, intelligent and thought-provoking works that perfectly echo the sense of a gallery on the up and up.

Gallery Director Hannah Watson, is full of enthusiasm for Fitzrovia, citing the diverse range of wholesale fashion outlets, mysterious creative agencies, good value restaurants and amazing pubs that all contribute to the area's unique character. “Moving to Fitzrovia helped me rediscover my love for London,” she tells me, and right now it's easy to see why. Let's just hope the developers don't crush it too soon.

Fitzrovia Facts:
Eat: Ragam; Back to Basics; Salt Yard
Drink: Crown and Sceptre; Green Man; Blue Posts; Newman Arms
Stop: Kaffeine; Riding House Cafe; Tapped and Packed
Stay: The Sanderson; The Langham

See our map of Fitzrovia in full.

Return to Spoonfed's London Art homepage.

Tom Jeffreys