After 5 years at Vyner Street, Nicoletti are moving to a larger space at 91 Paul Street in Shoreditch.
Built in 1899, the 1,279 sq ft converted Victorian warehouse on Paul Street will enable Nicoletti to expand their activities across two galleries: a large space for the main exhibition programme and a smaller one for experimental programming and special projects. The gallery is excited to be working with JAM, a group of architects formed by Adam Willis and Joe Halligan, co-founders of Turner Prize-winning collective, Assemble.
Founded in 2018 by French dealer Oswaldo Nicoletti – as a nomadic curatorial project organising group exhibitions in unusual locations in Paris and London – the gallery has always emphasised dialogue and exchange between the artistic scenes in the UK and France. Co-directed by Camille Houzé, a French curator and writer, the programme foregrounds critically-engaged artists working across multiple disciplines, with a focus on practices addressing the relationship between ecology, colonial history and identity.
Since its creation, Nicoletti has been committed to facilitating the research and production of critical discourses. Alongside the exhibition programme, the gallery curates N?COLETT? DIGITAL, VR exhibitions with artists whose medium is digital technology, and commissions sound works as part of N?COLETT? AUDIO.
Founder Oswaldo Nicoletti and Director Camille Houzé:
After 5 years operating from Hackney’s Vyner Street, where we were the only gallery to reopen after the pandemic, we wanted to bring new energy to our activity. Moving to Shoreditch will make the gallery more accessible to clients living in Central and West London while allowing us to stay true to our identity as an East London gallery – and to the community we have built over the years. Paul Street occupies an interesting position in the area, a walking distance from institutions like the Barbican and Raven Row, as well as from a dynamic pool of galleries such as Emalin, Hales, Kate MacGarry, and Modern Art on Helmet Row. We are also excited to work in a larger space, where the architects from JAM did a fantastic work to highlight the original features of this 19th Century Victorian warehouse. There, in addition to the main gallery space, we’ve been able to create a comfortable office and viewing room to welcome our clients, and an additional space dedicated to showing experimental projects and younger artists.
On 19th September, the gallery will open to the public with a solo show by French artist Tarek Lakhrissi.
Combining poetry, film, sculpture and installation, Lakhrissi’s transdisciplinary practice centres on queer and diasporic perspectives and experiences. His installations borrow their aesthetics from literature and pop culture, often using autofiction – the interfusion of a biographical report with fictional elements – to discuss socio-political narratives.
Titled SPIT, this exhibition centres on a new body of work that invites viewers to navigate an oniric space. Testing the tensions between light / darkness and desire / melancholy, Lakhrissi explores the potential of fiction and eroticism as tools for emancipation from marginalisation. Inspired by an experience in which the artist was spat on and verbally attacked during Pride in Paris for carrying Palestinian and Algerian flags, the exhibition takes the physical act of ejecting liquid from one’s mouth, and the erotic and aggressive dimensions of this act, as a point of departure to explore tensions between violence and desire, subversion and resistance.
Giant 3D-printed works, including a larger-than-life Angry Face With Horns emoji, will be presented alongside glass sculptures of romantic symbols such as suns and kissing tongues. A recent development in the artist’s practice is represented by a series of drawings of queer figures, angels and demons. Combining dreams and fantasies with references to pop culture and sexual histories, these works speak to mechanisms of desire and identity formation.
In early October, the gallery will participate in Frieze’s Focus section for the third year in a row, with a solo booth by young Togolese-British artist Divine Southgate-Smith.
READ: THAT’S INTERESTING Camille Houzé.
