Edge of Arabia, the non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting Middle Eastern art, is leaving its Battersea headquarters in south London this week, and relocating to a large, abandoned building near Bermondsey. The non-profit is moving out of its gallery space to make way for a luxury development.
“The gentrification of the area means we have to move our gallery and production underground,” says Stephen Stapleton, who co-founded the initiative in 2003 with the Saudi artists Ahmed Mater and Abdulnasser Gharem. Exhibitions held in the Battersea space have been dedicated to artists such as Yazan Khalili of Palestine and Walid Siti of Iraqi-Kurdistan.