The summer auction deluge is almost upon us and auction houses are looking for novel and entertaining ways of presenting their works that are coming up for sale. On show at Christies’ King Street headquarters until Tuesday 16 June is “Past Perfect Future Present”, a wunderkammer-like exhibition organised by the auction house’s own Alina Brezhneva, Bianca Chu, Milo Dickinson and Tancredi Massimo di Roccasecca, that mixes around 100 works from an array of forthcoming auctions including post war and contemporary, Impressionist and Modern, Old Masters, furniture, tribal art (Paris), books and manuscripts, antiquities and Islamic art.
Spread throughout five rooms, each with a different theme, an El Greco hangs next to a Fontana, Chris Ofili’s controversial The Virgin Mary (1996)—est £1.5m-£2m and consigned by the gambling millionaire David Walsh to benefit his Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania—is coupled with tribal sculptures and an Emil Nolde painting, while a Pieter Brueghel work hangs comfortably next to a Francis Bacon.
To spice things up further, works by four young contemporary artists working with London-based galleries are interspersed with Christie’s pieces: James Balmforth (Hannah Barry Gallery), Armand Boua (Jack Bell Gallery), Olga Chernysheva (Pace) and Harry Sanderson (Arcadia Missa).