Yesterday (17 January) may have been Blue Monday but it was a red-letter day for Sadie Coles who threw an extremely jolly lunch to celebrate the 20th anniversary of her gallery, which she opened in 1997 on Heddon Street with a show of John Currin. Serendipitously, Currin’s most recent paintings are currently to be seen at her Davies Street space.
Gathered at the Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch to toast two decades of Sadie Coles HQ, in cheerily unseasonal Campari-and-blood-orange cocktails, were the gallery’s co-director Pauline Daley and a good showing of gallery artists, including Sarah Lucas, Simon Periton, Don Brown (plus gorgeous new baby daughter Yuki) and Steven Claydon. Also present were many gallery supporters such as the Irish über-collectors Joe and Marie Donnelly; the photographer Johnnie Shand-Kydd; and the former Glasgow International director Sarah McCrory. The latter was also celebrating her recent appointment as the director of a major new contemporary art gallery currently being built at Goldsmiths' College by the Turner-prize winning architects Assemble.
There was more gaiety as Brian Boylan—the chairman of Wolff Olins consultancy and long-standing gallery champion, whom Coles had just described as her “secret weapon”— produced some merriment of his own. This came in the form of an awesome Jeroboam of fine red wine from 1998, when the gallery was just a year old. Certainly a most effective way to chase the blues away…