Sundaram Tagore Gallery is set to open a new London gallery at Pall Mall this May, marking a significant expansion for the internationally minded programme founded in New York in 2000.
Located in a landmark Edwardian building in St James’s, the new 310-square-metre, multi-level space signals a deepening of the gallery’s long-standing relationship with the city. Designed by London-based studio Stabb following a year-long renovation, the gallery unfolds across two floors, combining exhibition spaces with a private viewing room and areas for talks, screenings and live performance—underscoring a programme that has always moved fluidly between disciplines.
The opening also feels personal. Founder Sundaram Tagore spent formative years in London, studying at Oxford and researching in the British Museum Library, while his father, painter Subho Tagore, developed his practice in the city decades earlier.
“I’ve never followed a predictable path when choosing where to put down roots for a new gallery,”
Tagore says.
“I’ve never been one to wait for people to come to me. I go to them.”
A Cross-Cultural Opening
The inaugural exhibition, Hybridity and Belonging in Contemporary Art, brings together artists whose practices move between geographies, identities and histories. Painting, sculpture and installation converge in a show shaped by questions of displacement, memory and the refusal of singular identity.
At its centre are works that hold both material and conceptual weight. Japanese painter Hiroshi Senju presents new works that extend his meditative engagement with nature, while Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Lipi contributes sculptures formed from razor blades—objects that carry a visceral charge, referencing violence and vulnerability.
Spirituality and abstraction surface in the works of Sohan Qadri, whose vividly coloured paper works resonate with a sense of inner stillness, while emerging artist Kenny Nguyen introduces sculptural installations built from painted silk—lightweight, shifting forms that hover between object and environment.
The exhibition extends across a wide network of practices and perspectives, including works by Anila Quayyum Agha, Miya Ando, Chun Kwang Young, Jane Lee and Zheng Lu, among others—each contributing to a broader conversation around global identity and contemporary belonging.
A Programme in Motion
The London space is conceived not simply as a gallery but as a platform for exchange. Public programming—including performances, discussions and screenings—will sit alongside exhibitions, extending the gallery’s emphasis on dialogue across cultures.
This direction continues into the year ahead. A summer exhibition will focus on Miya Ando, whose work explores light, atmosphere and perception through painting on metal and large-scale installations. In autumn, Chun Kwang Young will present a solo exhibition of his Aggregations—intricate sculptural works composed of thousands of paper-wrapped forms, balancing repetition with tactile intensity.
With its new London outpost, Sundaram Tagore Gallery positions itself firmly within the city’s historic gallery district while continuing to build a programme defined by movement—across borders, disciplines and ways of seeing.
Inaugural Exhibition: Hybridity and Belonging in Contemporary Art, May 16th – June 20th, 2026 Sundaram Tagore Gallery, London
About Sundaram Tagore Gallery
When Sundaram Tagore opened his first gallery in New York in 2000, his mission was to show that some of the best, most meaningful art was being created by artists deeply engaged in cross- cultural explorations. He focused on diasporic artists and those from underrepresented cultures outside Europe and the United States, with the aim of bringing them to the forefront.
Crossing cultural and national boundaries, these artists synthesized disparate visual languages, techniques, and philosophies—from the West, Asia, the Subcontinent, and the Middle East. By incorporating authentic elements from their own cultures, artists from the periphery added richness and complexity to the artistic language that dominated the Western canon. Throughout its history and across all locations, Sundaram Tagore Gallery has consistently celebrated diversity in all forms, intercultural dialogue, and bringing people together through art. With every exhibition, the goal is to ignite an exchange of ideas and to use art as a vehicle to remind people that more unites us than separates us.
About Sundaram Tagore
Sundaram Tagore is an Indian-born Oxford-educated art historian, gallerist, and award- winning filmmaker. A descendant of the poet and Nobel Prize-winner Rabindranath Tagore, he promotes East-West dialogue through exhibitions and events at his galleries in New York, Singapore and London and at museums worldwide.
Tagore was previously a director at Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York. In addition, he has worked with many international organizations, including the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; The Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the United Nations. He has served as a board member of the Isamu Noguchi Museum and the Asian Cultural Council, New York.
Tagore has written for numerous art publications and lectures frequently on art, including at the
Tällberg Forum, Sweden, Sotheby’s, Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents Club, and Singapore
Management University. Louis Kahn’s Tiger City, his feature-length documentary on architect Louis I. Kahn debuted at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2019. His current project, a narrative short film titled Art Matters, starring Nandita Das and Linus Roache, explores the dilemma of a contemporary painter whose long-awaited breakthrough turns bittersweet, forcing her to choose between public acclaim and artistic integrity.
