Advisory Notes: London Buddies up to Beat the January Blues

The monthly musings of Ocula Advisory, bringing you the inside perspectives and picks from our unending travels around the global art world.

For all of January’s promises of a fresh start, the art world has always been a slow riser for the first few weeks of the year.

As the market wakes up, the timing of CONDO London—the collaborative gallery initiative which launched its seventh edition last weekend—feels all the more appropriate, with its refreshingly artist-centred ethos.

CONDO was set up in 2016 by Vanessa Carlos, the owner of East London gallery Carlos/Ishikawa, who has built a reputation that breathes life into that awkward art world adage, ‘an artist’s gallerist’. With a genuine international focus and a radar that moves beyond immediate market trends, Carlos has a knack for discovering and nurturing some of the brightest young talent; Oscar Murillo and Issy Wood were both supported early on by Carlos and quickly became market mainstays.

It’s in that same spirit that CONDO has evolved, with smaller galleries from further afield and lesser-known artists hosted in a temporary celebratory home in central London at a time when the local circuit is still limbering up—with the stellar exception of a beautiful Lynette Yiadom-Boakye exhibition that just opened at Corvi-Mora south of the river.

Participating galleries are scattered across London, but criss-crossing the city feels a little less urgent given that the shows will be open until mid-February. Over in Whitechapel, Union Pacific is hosting blank projects from Cape Town and Gypsum Gallery from Cairo. Kenyan artist Velma Rosai-Makhandia is a sublime standout; her loose, confident painting style and surprising combinations of washed-out earthy tones with brighter hues render mystical, folkloric images closely connected to the feminine body.

Showing at Soft Opening—host to Derosia, New York—is Kern Samuel, a young Trinidadian artist who studied in the MFA programme at Yale. His small patchwork canvas references the repeated single-square technique used by Gee’s Bend quiltmakers—a tradition dating back to the 19th century that was developed by women and their ancestors in the remote Alabama hamlet of Gee’s Bend. The abstract composition feels analogous to pixelated digital imagery, yet the dyeing process and stitching techniques keep the work beautifully tactile.

Margate-based galleries Roland Ross and 243 Luz have moved into Mayfair courtesy of Arcadia Missa, bringing with them a group show of nine artists. Among them is British artist Mark Barker, whose recent survey at Wolfgang Tillmans’ Between Bridges space in Berlin featured quietly poised gestures across sculpture, drawing, and photography, charged with anatomical intrigue and contortion.

Seoul-based Korean gallerist Jason Haam is hosted by Carlos/Ishikawa, along with three artists from his programme: Jihyoung Han, Jungwook Kim, and Mike Lee. Carlos/Ishikawa is also presenting another of Haam’s artists, Moka Lee, who they now jointly represent. Moka Lee’s figurative paintings are made with oil on cotton and portray subjects gleaned from social media. While the source material can be candidly prosaic, Lee’s compositions and treatments bring a fresh, wistful beauty.

Carlos/Ishikawa, with their enviable track record for bringing stability and longevity to the market for emerging artists, feels like the perfect platform for Lee, giving her further exposure to a global audience. But more simply, this show encapsulates how CONDO supports a healthy mutualism. As Jason Haam tells us, he can ‘present his artists in London at virtually no cost’, providing his gallery with ‘a real momentum catalyst’. Carlos herself, on the other hand, benefits from partnering with a great new prospect for her gallery.

It’s this cooperative spirit of discovery that brings a comforting warmth during the greyest of times in London. Woolly hats off to Carlos, CONDO, and all the participating galleries. —[O]

CONDO London runs through 15 February 2025.

Main image: Velma Rosai-Makhandia, celestial bathhouses (2024) (detail). Acrylic and oil pastels on canvas. 128.7 x 142.7 cm. Courtesy the artist and Union Pacific, London.