Each week, it appears, we hear information of one other gallery closure—this yr alone, Clearing, Blum, TJ Boulting, to call just a few, have bitten the mud.
However on the similar time, others are seemingly bucking the downward pattern, amongst them the London artwork seller Ben Hunter, who this October will open a newly expanded gallery, occupying a complete townhouse at 44 Duke Road in London’s St James’s.
Hunter labored for the Outdated Grasp work seller Derek Johns and the sculpture specialist Robert Bowman earlier than founding his personal gallery in 2018. For a quick interval within the lead up, he additionally ran the gallery Hunter / Whitfield with Orlando Whitfield. (Whitfield is maybe finest recognized now for his ebook All That Glitters, during which he recounts the numerous misdemeanours of his good friend, the fraudster Inigo Philbrick.)
Hunter began with an workplace area in St James’s, earlier than taking up a part of 44 Duke Road in 2020. Progressively as others left, he took more room. “When [the lease for] downstairs got here up, I assumed why not reconsolidate what’s a small however lovely townhouse that has been carved up over a long time,” Hunter tells The Artwork Newspaper. The constructing, during which Jay Jopling initially arrange White Dice in 1993, occupies the identical block as Christie’s, Hunter’s landlord.
What’s the monetary case for making such a giant funding in a historic constructing that requires substantial refurbishment? “Effectively, I feel that there are many issues that feed into it,” Hunter says. “We’re in an especially aggressive market, notably within the main market, and I feel as a seller, it’s a must to match the ambition of your artists as properly. I feel it retains them engaged to have new context during which to point out their work. But additionally, generally you simply must go for it when a possibility arises.”
Clementine Keith-Roach, Nothing that has ever occurred is misplaced (2025)
Courtesy of the gallery and the artist
Hunter’s enterprise mannequin is “fairly pluralistic”, he says. “We’re not counting on one artist bringing within the lion’s share of the income. Even when costs have come off a bit, it does not imply that there isn’t urge for food to purchase on the proper worth. So, so long as your overheads aren’t manner out of kilter along with your means to conclude transactions and make some revenue, there’s nonetheless room for development.” He provides: “Our enterprise may be very steady, now we have money reserves.”
Artwork gala’s, Hunter is fast so as to add, “at the moment are as a lot of a monetary dedication as a constructing—they’ve gone up [in price] by a lot.” The gallery participates in Tefaf in Maastricht and New York, Frieze Masters, Frieze New York and The Armory Present. “These at the moment are operating big prices,” Hunter says, declaring that delivery alone has gone up extortionately. “We used to ship works to and from New York within the low 1000’s, now we frequently get a £10,000 invoice for a single image.”
Festivals do, nonetheless, present “extraordinarily useful transaction environments”, he provides. “Having stated that, my enterprise doesn’t depend on artwork gala’s, however I feel it does depend on having a fantastic area that’s inspiring for each collectors and artists. My artists are more and more engaged on very bold museum tasks and with different, greater galleries, so I’m excited to create an area commensurate with these different environments.”
How does Hunter place his gallery inside the market?
Ben Hunter Gallery trades in main and secondary market works, largely worldwide and post-war British artwork. Hunter describes it as “sitting someplace between a main gallery and a extra old school artwork seller.”
He continues: “We promote on consignment. We additionally maintain inventory. We do each. We don’t have an exterior investor within the gallery, and the secondary market definitely would not underwrite the first programming.”
He sees additional alternatives for scholarship and engagement in undervalued post-war British artwork particularly, and enjoys enjoying with juxtapositions between modern and Twentieth-century artists: “We work with a tremendous sculptor referred to as Clementine Keith-Roach—I’m simply as keen on how she contextualises Henry Moore as how Henry Moore contextualises her. More and more, do not actually see any delineation between the first and secondary market.”
The newly renovated gallery will open for Frieze Week in October (precise date to be confirmed) with a combined present, titled merely 44 Duke Road, of latest work by gallery artists, together with Keith-Roach, Phoebe Boswell and Christopher Web page, alongside Twentieth century works by Frank Auerbach, Ithell Colquhoun, Henry Moore and Bridget Riley. Hunter will even exhibit at Frieze Masters, exhibiting predominantly post-war British artwork.
