Sid Motion, 24a Penarth Centre, Hatcham Road, London SE15 1TR
sidmotiongallery.co.uk Instagram: @sidmotiongallery
When I first met Sid Motion, she was working for Max Wigram gallery (remember that?), soon followed by David Zwirner – and her main claim to fame was that her father, Andrew, had recently been Poet Laureate. Sid moved on via Photo London to found her own gallery in 2016, initially in venues north of the river, switching to South Bermondsey in 2019 – close to Millwall’s football ground and, perhaps more usefully, next to the studio of her partner, the painter Charlie Billingham. She represents only five artists – painters Remi Ajni, Max Wade and Morgan Wills, and Dafna Talmor, who works with photography. But the gallery has shown many artists beyond that: my favourite exhibitions have been solos by Jo Dennis (four of them!), Paul Housley, Tom Lovelace, and Holly Stevenson; and a brace of two-person shows pairing Hannah Hughes with Talmor and Olivia Bax respectively.
The current group show – ‘Rapid Eye Movements’ is well up to standard, and I look forward to an offsite project with Bax at the New Art Centre in Wiltshire (opens 14th Sept). What do the artists share? Ideas-driven work that arrives at distinctive aesthetics, perhaps. Sid also organises an annual art trail across local studios… which you’ve just missed, it was on 24th August – sorry about that! In conclusion, here’s a trivia question: now that Koenig’s London branch has closed, which is the only London contemporary gallery to sport a neon sign? Ah, you guessed.
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.
