Are restaurants the new galleries?
Plus, the annual gallerina sacrifice: CONDO London, the sound art renaissance, and more
Below: the annual gallerina door-duty sacrifice @ CONDO London 2026, Chanel at the helm of arts patronage, a cancelled Italian fashion house (guess who), a new Soho restaurant-cum-art gallery, and the sound art renaissance.
CONDO LONDON 2026
The free bar of the CONDO London party makes for an evening of unrivalled debauchery and a peek behind the customer service voices of your favourite gallerists. CONDO is a citywide collaborative exhibition run by the team at Carlos/Ishikawa, in which London’s (coolest) galleries invite their international counterparts to co-curate a month long show. It’s a great way for spaces to increase their presence abroad (without the budget strain of a fair booth fee), and also – frankly – the only fun thing happening in January, which is obviously extra depressing in the UK.
The Union Club in Soho, where the party takes place, is the perfect setting for the kind of unhinged behaviour which comes with pent-up new-year mania and workaholism. It is the antithesis of Soho House’s polished pompousness: dingy, cramped and covered with ephemera. The annual tradition of sacrificing a junior gallerina for doorman duties means that party-crashers are rife, which is a fun way to spice up an otherwise repetitive art-insider gathering. There are always enough drinks to go around.
You can expect: gallerist/collector hookups, an overwhelming smell of mini-burger sliders, and bitching in the smoking area (as always).
Unfortunately I was working all weekend, so I left the proceedings after a couple of whisky sodas and had a rather demure end to the night, in a Bloomsbury Lanes karaoke booth. I shall be making the exhibition rounds next Saturday, and will feed back accordingly – but for now, I have received some qualified intel that these are the presentations not to miss:
- NıCOLETTı hosting Magician Space, Beijing (presenting work by Yasmine Anlan Huang) – 91 Paul Street, EC2A 4NY
- TINA hosting Jan Mot, Brussels (presenting work by Dom Sylvester Houédard & E.E. Vonna-Michell - Henri Chopin) – 191 Wardour Street, W1F 8ZE
- Soft Opening hosting Company Gallery, New York (presenting work by Women’s History Museum) – 6 Minerva Street, E2 9EH
- Arcadia Missa hosting Kayokoyuki, Tokyo (presenting work by Kazuki Matsushita) – 25 Duke St, W1U 1LH
CHANEL NEXT PRIZE WINNERS ANNOUNCED
The Chanel Culture Fund champions a very tasteful model of arts philanthropy under Yana Peel, based on soft power patronage and partnerships rather than starchitect-designed museums. It has just announced the winners of its biannual Chanel Next Prize, whose jury included the omnipresent Hans Ulrich Obrist, Alvin Li of the Tate Modern, Ben Roberts of the BFI, the artist Cao Fei, and Tilda Swinton (who needs no introduction).
Each of the ten winners – spanning visual artists and fashion designers to jazz trumpeters and dancers – receives €100,000 plus two years of mentorship provided by Chanel’s cultural partners, including the RCA.
Standout artists are varied. Ayoung Kim is a hotshot Seoul-based digital artist whose state-of-the-art worldbuilding, rooted in speculative fiction, is popular with technophiles and nuance-hungry critics alike. Emeka Ogboh is a Nigerian sound artist whose work immerses its viewer (listener?) in the sonic fabric of Lagos. Pan Daijing also works with the auditory (more on this shortly): she is an acclaimed artist and composer, whose portfolio spans an opera created for Tate’s subterranean ‘Tanks’ space and a debut US institutional show at the Walker Art Center last year.
I’m a devoted follower of Chanel Arts and Culture under Peel, who I feel is at the helm of a truly sustainable and exemplary system of arts patronage, one which could very much shape the future of the cultural industries.
CANCELLATION OF THE WEEK: DOLCE & GABBANA
No surprises here. D&G’s latest fuck-up comes in the form of their Milan Fall 2026 menswear show, which featured an exclusively white-presenting cast of models. It was (insanely) titled ‘The Portrait of Man’. You know something is up when brands aren’t even pretending to perform diversity. I have my own problems with Bella Hadid, but at least she called them out:
Prada, on the other hand, dealt with the fucked-up-edness of the world in a more self-aware way. “You talk about the world now,” said Miuccia and Raf, “or you talk about fashion … The two things together, in this moment, are difficult.” I have a soft spot for Raf Simons because I met him once and he was very nice, and also very sensitive, which are the best qualities in an artist. “In the past, people did react to world situations with the way they dressed, if you go to the 60s or 70s and further back,” he told The Guardian. “Now, it’s not directly a reaction [but] we feel like we should not sit still, we want to try.”
ARE RESTAURANTS THE NEW GALLERIES?
While many restaurants and private members clubs – see Soho House – are widely known for their illustrious art collections, less are renowned for their for-purchase offerings. It’s an interesting model: scene-y restaurants attract varied clientele, evidently with disposable income and often with an understanding of cultural developments. Plus, there’s nothing like a boozy meal to warm up the wallet.
Charlie Mellor – the restauranteur, sommelier and former operatic tenor of Hackney Road’s former The Laughing Heart – is opening Osteria Vibrato on Greek Street next month. Central to the restaurant’s environment will be a rotating art programme curated by Cedric Bardawil, whose permanent space on Compton St is currently showing a solo exhibition of work by Anthony Banks.
I am very here for the renaissance of food media – evidenced by ventures such as Caper Media and the revival of Condé Nast’s Gourmet magazine as a twice-weekly newsletter – and as someone in the arts, I find this model very exciting. Hospitality is becoming more and more buzzy; now is a good time for galleries to cash in on the excitement.
SOUND ART> VISUAL ART?
I am ashamed to say that Kingston is a part of London I have not yet visited, despite its possession of Henry VIII’s majestic former stomping ground – but alas, this will soon have to change. Having already mentioned Chanel’s platforming of sonic artists, it felt prescient that this weekend I was informed of a London-based residency/show opening tomorrow at Stanley Picker Gallery, with Sophie Huckfield, Nnena Kalu (the 2025 Turner Prize winner) & Rebecca Kressley, Abbas Zahedi and more.
Titled ‘Attack Decay Sustain Release’, this exhibition takes a slightly unconventional format: it is a ten-week residency in which listed artists are invited to reflect on sonic presences in their practice, opening their studios/gallery spaces to the public on designated days. You can check the site for opening dates and times – they are variable.
Perhaps this is a premonition of a sonic art takeover? At Frieze London last year, my teenage brother, in the midst of some GCSE project or another, asked where he could find some interesting sounds in the labyrinthine tent. I laughed, and told him that nobody wanted to buy noise. Yet as traditional collector/patronage motivations shift from financial investment to cultural clout, could the market prove me wrong?
Going outside:
My friend Jacob and his dad David Gryn recently opened their own gallery, Interval, in a beautiful converted Georgian townhouse just down the road from where I live. The space is worth seeing for its own charm – it has been meticulously renovated in a way which preserves its original character and adds modern essentials, such as a back-room kitchen for evening supper clubs. It also echoes Interval’s ethos, which merges old and new practices by pairing contemporary art and Old Masters. Their next show opens on Saturday, and is a dreamy pairing of work by Sebastián Espejo, one of my favourite young artists, and Pierre Bonnard (!!!).
Another friend, Leon Scott-Engel, is opening a duo exhibition with Chloe Beddow on Thursday, at another of my favourite young galleries, Pipeline. I love Pipeline’s initiative of promoting cross-regional artistic collaboration, which I’m really passionate about, so I was happy to hear them announce a Visiting Gallery & Curator Program for 2026. They will be inviting national and international galleries and curators to take over one floor of their new Windmill Street space for temporary exhibitions, thereby introducing them to the unrivalled networks concentrated in the capital city.
Serendipitously, the first two pieces of art I ever acquired were a print from Beddow’s degree show and one of Leon’s jewel-like wood panel paintings, which still hangs above my dining table. I’m so excited to see their work in the same setting!
Reading:
As an avid voice-noter (sorry), I worried that this article – about the voice-note as the death knell of conversation – would trigger me. I do, however, worry about the phone call’s future as a result of this phenomenon. Never trust somebody who doesn’t prefer a phone call to a text exchange.
I also read Biz Sherbert’s first article as editor at The Face, ‘How to build a girl in modern America’. I love Biz’s immersive reporting, in which fashion theory sits next to niche internet micro-trends. The only way to write accurately about a community is to experience it. This piece is about the modern American south, #RushTok, and student celebrities:
I don’t feel any judgment towards the girls I’ve met this weekend for taking Ozempic, or starving themselves, or bending over backwards to fit in or make an ugly guy choose them. They are doing what they feel like they have to, and there’s great pleasure in belonging and being desired. But maybe tradition and modernity weren’t meant to combine this way.
Finally, I read a fabulous ArtReview Asia essay on Singapore’s VIP orchid programme, dubbed ‘orchid diplomacy’, in which the country names flowers after its special guests. See the Dendrobium Margaret Thatcher or the Sealara Nelson Mandela. This feature has everything: botanical linguistics, nature-technology hybridisation, foreign policy, and scandalous figures. I loved it!
Listening:
Great song for invoking cinematic melancholia on grey London commutes (I am a masochist). Sourced from Lynch’s erotic masterpiece, Wild at Heart (1990), which has endowed me with a newfound Nicholas Cage obsession.
Wearing:
AQUAMARINE ˗ˏˋ★‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹