Milo Astaire

The Artist Room, Milo Astaire's newly opened gallery on London's Brewer Street, takes slow and considered curating as its modus operandi.

Having spent the last few years managing private collections and curating exhibitions including Gary Card's knock-out immersive presentation Hysterical at Phillips in 2019, The Artist Room was set up organically, through the lens of Astaire's past experiences.

At the centre of this operation is a commitment and passion for art, guided by principles of connoisseurship, authenticity, and a forward-thinking attitude. These values are reflected in Astaire's ongoing project Plaster Magazine, founded alongside his brother Finn Constantine. Each issue of the magazine, which folds out into a collectable poster, focuses on a single artist's practice.

Recent issues have included Kenny Scharf, Harland Miller, and Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, with each iteration incorporating an in-depth interview alongside newly commissioned photography.

Currently without an artist roster, the gallery is at a very nimble moment, whereby younger artists' work is contextualised through thoughtful presentations. The gallery's first exhibition Windows, for instance, placed works by younger artists such as Nicole Coson, Poppy Jones, and Prem Sahib alongside those by Cy Twombly, Daidō Moriyama, and Ed Ruscha to consider the window as a portal of communication.

Continuing this approach, their upcoming exhibition ECHO will feature seminal works by Kaari Upson and Jane Simpson shown in dialogue with new commissions by George Henry Longly and Grace Woodcock.

Including sculpture and photography, the show will explore the memories that objects hold; how artists have transformed them into portals for exploring introspective histories and our broader human psyche.

Interspersed between these curated shows are presentations of works by emerging artists including Kristy M Chan, who recently graduated from the Slade, looking at her unique approach to expressionism.

Speaking of his own interests, Astaire explains that his eye is naturally drawn to photography and in particular the work of the Pictures Generation, such as Louise Lawler and Richard Prince, whose radical work utilises appropriation to bridge movements of both conceptualism and Pop. Below are some of the artworks that caught his eye on Ocula's artworks platform.