Alice Amati, 27 Warren Street, London W1T 5NB
www.aliceamati.com Instagram: @_aliceamati
I knew Alice Amati from her previous roles – at Taymour Grahne, David Zwirner and Workplace – before she set up her own space two years ago. She says the Warren Street venture, currently representing seven artists, ‘is committed to fostering artists at the early stages of their career’ providing ‘a supportive context for artistic explorations and career development’, and often providing their first London solo shows: that has been delivered for such as Annabelle Agbo Godeau, Sofía Salazar Rosales and Rafal Topolewski – the names suggest the international reach. Consistent with that tack, Amati is on the board of New Contemporaries (see the show at the ICA currently), and is also a co-founder of the Apollo Painting School, works from which will be shown in the lower space shortly.
My two favourite exhibitions to date have been the American painter Danielle Fretwell’s obscured still lifes and veiled canvases early last year; and the current ‘Listen, they left a sigh in the curtain’ by Dusseldorf based and trained Rike Droescher. Amati produces as informative booklet about each exhibition, in this case telling us the Droescher enjoyed the impressive teaching line-up of Andreas Gursky, Alexandra Bircken, and Peter Piller; and that the exhibition space can be considered a cave within which the personal meets the ancient, with the theme of the urge to fly. So, for example, weaving, seen as documenting the passage of time, is used to evoke the childhood memory of being ‘flown’ in play, by appropriating found images of acrobats practicing flight exercises – while also referencing the ‘birdman’ painting the caves of Lascaux; pillows are ready to catch fallers; and curtains are blown, but fixed in ceramic, an appropriate material for a cave.
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.
