Richard Saltoun: 41 Dover Street, London W1S 4NS
www.richardsaltoun.com Instagram: @richardsaltoungallery
I first met Richard Saltoun some 16 years ago, when he was dealing from Savile Row together with Laurent Delaye (who now runs his gallery from Ramsgate) prior to setting up on his own account in 2012. That was in Fitzrovia: he moved to the heart of Mayfair in 2018 – and also has an outpost in Rome. The gallery has become distinctive in its support of artists who combine a conceptual approach with political awareness (such as Peter Kennard and Victor Burgin) and feminist artists / estates in particular. My impression is that women are shown more than 50% of the time, even though the gallery line-up has a roughly equal number of male artists.
Certainly, that was true in 2019, when the programme was declared ‘100% Women’, and another refreshingly unusual year was 2021 when all the shows were related to the writings of the political philosopher Hannah Arendt. Among my other favourites have been group shows on such themes as sexuality, women’s work, and matrescence; serious consideration of textiles and ceramics; and solos for Gina Pane, Annegret Soltau, Renate Bertlmann and – perhaps the artist most consistently featured – Helen Chadwick. It’s no surprise, then, that the Tate’s well-received ‘Women in Revolt’, which focuses on feminist art of the 1970’s and 80’s, has considerable crossover with Richard Saltoun’s programme: the gallery’s Rose English, Su Richardson, Penny Slinger and Jo Spence feature, as well as Chadwick; and Alexis Hunter (1948-2018) is at both at the Tate and Dover Street, where she has a punchy retrospective. Indeed, one of the gallery’s recent online shows brought together a selection of artists from ‘Women in Revolt’.
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.
