London Gallery Weekend (LGW) kicked off early on June 4 with a salon-style conversation among three dealers (with moderator Melanie Gerlis) at very different levels of the market: Thaddaeus Ropac, Kate MacGarry and Emma Hodgson, co-founder of Pale Horse, the youngest gallery participating in this year’s edition of LGW. London is still second only to New York as an art market hub, the panel emphasized, with the U.K. accounting for 18 percent of the global art market, according to the Art Basel & UBS report. But its strength is not only commercial: it is also defined by its concentration of institutions, and even more importantly, of international artists. As Ropac put it, “An artworld can be successful only with its artists.”
Touching on the usual post-Brexit argument, Ropac, who maintains spaces in both London and Paris, noted that the latter city is becoming stronger without London losing ground, and that “this competition is healthy and good.” London, he added, had perhaps been too sure of itself for too long, while Paris is still missing the number of international artists London has. Veteran London dealer Kate MacGarry, who has been based in East London since the 2000s, similarly emphasized how much of the city’s growth has been tied to the presence of artists’ studios and local creative ecosystems.
Pale Horse, which opened last year with a contemporary program focused on emerging and outsider artists not often shown in London, is part of a fresh wave of younger galleries opening in the city. It is also among the nine first-time LGW participants, a group that includes DES BAINS, which launched in 2022 and relocated from East London to Fitzrovia in 2023; General Assembly, which opened in 2023 on Saint George Street in Mayfair; Matt Carey-Williams, opened in 2024 on Porchester Place near Lisson Grove by a former senior director at Victoria Miro, Gagosian, White Cube and Haunch of Venison; NORITO, which has been in Beak Street, Soho, since 2024; piloto pardo, which launched near the Barbican in 2021; and TINA, a curator-led space that opened in 2024 on Wardour Street in Soho. Hodgson said that one of the biggest challenges for galleries like hers remains the city’s high overhead, particularly shipping and logistics, which have become more expensive after Brexit.
The exodus of wealth has also been a major issue. Ropac acknowledged that in recent years, and especially in the last few months, collectors and wealthy residents have been moving elsewhere, with Milan now a major destination alongside Dubai and Australia. But many remain connected to London as a place to see art.
While all the gallerists agreed that physical spaces remain necessary to build trust with artists, they also admitted to reconsidering the role of art fairs as of late. Toward the end of the conversation, Ropac shared his thoughts about how fairs have, in some ways, overtaken the gallery’s role in recent years. Instead, he suggested, art fairs should be places to get informed and connect, but the ultimate goal should be bringing people back into the gallery, getting them to follow the program and deepening their engagement with artists. Initiatives like London Gallery Weekend are helping more dealers work toward that goal, while also creating an important space for dialogue and community across galleries, where participants can advise one another rather than simply compete.
The wide variety across cultures, narratives, media and price tiers at this year’s LGW certainly reaffirmed the centrality of the London scene, even as it exposed a persistent lack of coordination between the commercial and institutional sectors. An alignment that, as discussed during the panel, could do much more to build momentum around the city’s art calendar. Ropac pointed to the success of Berlin Gallery Weekend’s collector dinners and broader social infrastructure, while noting that London Gallery Weekend remains more U.K.-centric. Paris, which held its own gallery weekend just the week before, demonstrates a similar dynamic. These events are essential for galvanizing local art scenes, but they are not yet in dialogue with one another and still mostly have a localized reach, which isn’t ideal for scenes attempting to compete for the already hard-to-reach attention of the Old Continent’s collectors and art professionals.
