Each week, it appears, we hear information of one other gallery closure—this yr alone, Clearing, Blum, TJ Boulting, to call a couple of, have bitten the mud.
However on the identical time, others are seemingly bucking the downward pattern, amongst them the London artwork supplier Ben Hunter, who this October will open a newly expanded gallery, occupying a whole townhouse at 44 Duke Road in London’s St James’s.
Hunter labored for the Outdated Grasp work supplier Derek Johns and the sculpture specialist Robert Bowman earlier than founding his personal gallery in 2018.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 greatest recognized now for his e-book All That Glitters, by which he recounts the numerous misdemeanours of his buddy, 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. Regularly 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, by 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 an enormous funding in a historic constructing that requires substantial refurbishment? “Properly, I feel that there are many issues that feed into it,” Hunter says. “We’re in a particularly aggressive market, notably within the main market, and I feel as a supplier, you must match the ambition of your artists as effectively. I feel it retains them engaged to have new context by which to indicate their work. But in addition, typically you simply need to go for it when a chance 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 value. So, so long as your overheads aren’t approach out of kilter along with your means to conclude transactions and make some revenue, there’s nonetheless room for progress.” He provides: “Our enterprise may be very secure, we’ve got money reserves.”
Artwork festivals, 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 enormous prices,” Hunter says, declaring that transport alone has gone up extortionately. “We used to ship works to and from New York within the low hundreds, now we frequently get a £10,000 invoice for a single image.”
Festivals do, nevertheless, present “extraordinarily useful transaction environments”, he provides. “Having mentioned that, my enterprise doesn’t depend on artwork festivals, however I feel it does depend on having a lovely area that’s inspiring for each collectors and artists. My artists are more and more engaged on very bold museum tasks and with different, larger 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 style artwork supplier.”
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 does not underwrite the first programming.”
He sees additional alternatives for scholarship and engagement in undervalued post-war British artwork specifically, and enjoys enjoying with juxtapositions between up to date and Twentieth-century artists: “We work with an incredible sculptor known as Clementine Keith-Roach—I’m simply as desirous about 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 recent 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 can even exhibit at Frieze Masters, displaying predominantly post-war British artwork.
