Gallery owner Niccolo Sprovieri was maintaining a tradition when he opened a gallery in 2000, as the original Sprovieri Gallery was founded in Rome in 1913. Moreover, Niccolo’s wife, Elisabetta Cipriani – also a Roman – commissions and deals in jewellery designed by artists and has on occasion operated from the Heddon Street premises. The gallery has moved since its founding, but only within the same building block, with both locations unobtrusively placed on the first floor. Heddon Street itself, I might mention in passing, packs plenty into its few yards: you’ll also find Pippy Houldsworth Gallery; a recreation of the Colony Room; businesses named for David Bowie – acknowledging that the phone box that appears on the cover of Ziggy Stardust is here; and plenty of restaurants, though the unusual ICEBAR closed last year.
Back at Sprovieri, the gallery has a clear mission statement, declaring that it ‘nurtures a program in all media defined by conceptualism. The artists explore the human condition and anticipate the socio-political changes of today, questioning the boundaries of their practices.’ That does feel like an accurate summary of the shows I’ve seen over the years, my favourites being the sardonic Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov; wide-ranging Russian couple Ilya and Emilia Kabakov; multimedia Brazilian art group Chelpa Ferro and individual Cinthia Marcelle; and the disruptive native American perspectives of Jimmie Durham. Arte Povera is also a good fit: plenty of Jannis Kounellis and – as currently – Mario Merz. All of which may give the impression that British artists are a rarity… and true enough, the only ones I can recall seeing are Art and Language.
London’s gallery scene is varied, from small artist-run spaces to major institutions and everything in between. Each month, art writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives a personal view of a space worth visiting. A collection of previous columns, ‘Paul’s Galleries To Go’, is available from FAD.
