Gagosian gallery opened a sleek new space in London, today, 8 October, its third in the capital and second in Mayfair. At 18,000 sq. ft, the new gallery on Grosvenor Hill, designed by Caruso St. John and featuring a bespoke lighting system and European oak flooring, is its largest in London and could be considered Gagosian’s flagship in the city. Britannia Street near King’s Cross in the north is 15,000 sq. ft, while the other Mayfair space on Davies Street is a small “shop window” showroom.
The opening of the Grosvenor Hill gallery in the Brutalist building that was formerly Savills’ headquarters is part of a cultural revival of Mayfair, which in recent years has seen several galleries, particularly on Cork Street, driven out by rising rents. Other additions to the area include Phillips auction house, which launched its vast European headquarters on Berkeley Square last October, and Sadie Coles, which is opening a new gallery on Davies Street on 4 November.
Gary Waterston, a director at Gagosian, welcomes the new arrivals. “The congregation of different galleries in a neighbourhood gives people a reason to take a stroll on a Sunday lunchtime or Tuesday morning,” he says, adding that the search for a new gallery began eight years ago, long before Phillips announced its plans to move to Mayfair.
Grosvenor, which is leasing the site to Gagosian for 20 years and manages 300 acres in Mayfair and Belgravia including the premises Phillips occupies, aims to re-establish Mayfair as a creative district. “We would like to build on the arrival of Gagosian,” says Craig McWilliam, the executive director of Grosvenor. “We don’t want fashion retail everywhere; it’s about having a diversity.”
As has been the case with several of Gagosian’s galleries, the Grosvenor Hill space opened with an exhibition of works by Cy Twombly, including two large-scale paintings from his Bacchus series that have never been shown in public. The works, which have been loaned by the Cy Twombly Foundation and private collections, are not for sale. However, photographs by Twombly on show at Davies Street are available for five-figure sums.