Copperfield, 6 Copperfield Street, London SE1 0EP
www.copperfieldgallery.com Instagram: @copperfield_london
When I first met Will Lunn he was the youngest gallerist in town, having founded Sumarria Lunn (with Vishal Sumarria) in 2009 when he was just 21 – using the last of his student loan. In 2014 he went solo, moving into what was originally the church hall of All Hallows, Southwark. The space already had an alternative history, both as a recording studio (Depeche Mode recorded their first album there in 1981) and as a gallery: Poppy Sebire (2010-12) and Ceri Hand (2013-14) presented their widely-respected programmes in the high-vaulted space for a while. Copperfield’s exhibitions tend towards the conceptual, and paintings are rare – so much so that when a group show featured works that looked rather like they might be paintings a couple of years back, the title ‘Not Painting’ revealed that they weren’t. Copperfield’s tenth anniversary finds it a Frieze regular.
British-Ghanaian Larry Achiampong has probably been the gallery’s highest profile artist recently, for example through his ‘Pan African’ flags and recasting of the London Underground roundel: you can see his version at Westminster tube station, acknowledging the continent’s contributions to London by using colours that speak symbolically to diasporic identities, and adding a star for each of the 54 African nations. Eleven artists are represented, with a wide geographical range: I’m partial to Marco Godoy, Rä di Martino, Oscar Santillán and David Rickard – from Spain, Italy, Ecuador and New Zealand respectively – as well as Jane Bustin, whose nuanced take on the Pirelli Calendar can be seen at the gallery until 17 Feb.
London’s gallery scene is varied, from small artist-run spaces to major institutions and everything in between. Each week, art writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives a personal view of a space worth visiting.
