Victoria Miro Gallery

Victoria Miro is a wonderful gallery. It was an excellent idea to set it up here, in a former industrial unit in Wharf Road. The spaces are large (for an indepenedent gallery) and the two floors often act as a dividing device, enabling artists to produce two-​level exhibitions, or for two different shows to be exhibited similtaneously.

Victoria Miro is quite renowned in the art world for the artists she represents and also for the prescience of her own vision. Having expanded into a glorious new space on Wharf Road (occupying an upper floor above Parasol Unit next door as well), the impact of her work is felt heavily in the London art scene, and an opening here is definitely worth attending, if only to know that you are drinking shit Chablis with the already made. And who knows: maybe it will even be good. The Chablis, that is. The show is more than certain to be noteworthy.

Architectural glamour was the essence of yesterday evenings champagne book launching event. Industrialised spaces are perfect for displaying art. The scale and proportions are enormous to comfort the viewer.
Victoria Miro is a woman who is known for nuturing young artists and her gallery is the perfect place for a pin-​up. She works closely with the architectural circle and the likes of Zaha Hadid, Lorenzo Appicella.
The gallery is a multilevelled bare and cold space with narrow alley like staircases leading to larger nooks and crannies. But the generosity of scale is appealing to display works of art. Good outdoor space has been used to create a water body which speaks poetry.
Something that was most interesting to me was in a room filled with people chatting away, you can almost feel the sound of gushing water or a stream. Its a calming sound when your absent from the space, in the presence its madness and chaos.
Monday visits to the gallery are by appointment only.

So far, I’ve only been talking about places that I have an undisputed and passionate bias towards and the Victoria Miro is no exception. On a desolate road on the Hackney-​Islington border and perilously close to McDonalds, it’s the last place you’d expect to find a paragon of aesthetic brilliance until you walk in. Boasting the likes of Chris Ofili, Grayson Perry and Isaac Julien on its roster (who also happen to be three of my favourite artists — if they exhibited Jake and Dinos Chapman too I’d move into the place), it is now hosting a jaw dropping show by Elmgreen and Dragset, in which visitors are met by a total transformation of the gallery’s interior architecture via several new interconnecting large-​scale installations. You will walk through what is described as a party that’s already over: lights are still blinking and the disco ball sadly spinning, but there’s no-​one on the dance floor, and the last round has been served long ago.
If you’re lucky enough in future to get into one of the previews (for that try First Thursday, or just get onto their mailing list; mere mortals are allowed — you don’t have to be the next Charles Saatchi or anything) you’ll also get to relax, drink wine and pretend to be intellectual on their gorgeous venranda, which has a paradoxically not-​so-​gorgeous view of weeds, a pond backing onto some old warehouse. The show ends on the 15^th so best hurry on down!

The huge space of this gallery takes you by suprise. The outside street is your typical East London ‘gallery street’ that at first seems like the backend of warehouses until you notice the sleekly designed titles on the doors denoting their art secrets inside. When I visited this space, I was fortunate enough to see the wonderful and crazy Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition. The vastness of the gallery space clearly facilitated Kusama’s famous psychedelic environments, allowing an enjoyable playground of madness for spectators! Also, there is a garden and a third gallery space that’s actually located in the building next door, which houses the Parasol Unit. This can be abit confusing, but on the up hand, why not take in two shows?

The Victoria Miro gallery is unprepossessing from the outside: it’s tucked behind McDonald’s just off City Road and you press a bell to be admitted. Inside it isn’t that easy to find your way around — the gallery consists of the original building, plus an extension over the neighbouring Parasol Unit Foundation of Contemporary Art. You nip from one to the other via the back terrace.
The extension would be worth seeing even if it was empty. Conceived by minimalist Claudio Silvestrin, it’s wonderfully open, white, clean and sleek, with views over this rapidly changing part of London. When I visited it was occupied by huge, dense and disorientating black and white paintings by Yayoi Kusama, commissioned for the space and suiting it perfectly.
The original building is less arresting and even slightly run down — it felt slightly dangerous picking my way up a wooden staircase in the dark to see Phil Collins’ video installation — but it’s another large and versatile space.
The gallery is free and you’ll find your way into the Parasol Unit at the same time. Well worth a visit.