The London dealer John Martin has partnered with Everard Read gallery from South Africa to launch Circa London in the Chelsea space Martin acquired last year. The new gallery is due to open fully in mid-March after renovations are complete, but the front part of the building opened earlier this week with a rotating display of contemporary works from South Africa and Europe.
“It’s a little taster of what’s to come,” says Martin, adding that the “thrust” of the programme will initially focus on South African artists, including Deborah Bell, Ricky Dyaloyi, Lyndi Sales and Nelson Makamo. A pop-up version of Circa London exhibited works by these artists at 1:54 contemporary African art fair in October. However, the idea is to keep the programme “fairly flexible”, Martin says, and the gallery will also show works from his stable of artists.
Martin has collaborated on a number of shows with Everard Read over the past decade, but his experience of the gallery goes back even further. “It was the first commercial gallery I ever saw, aged 15,” Martin says. Georgie Shields, one of the founders of Everard Read, is the director of Circa London.
Squeezed by rising rents in Mayfair, Martin originally planned to move his Albemarle Street gallery to the Chelsea venue, but managed to secure a more affordable lease on the first floor and moved upstairs in September. “I didn’t want to have two galleries doing the same thing and Mark Read [the director of the Johannesburg branch of Everard Read] had been thinking about opening a gallery in London for some time, so it made perfect sense to partner with them,” Martin says.
