Maureen Paley has been a pioneer of showing contemporary art ever since she opened her gallery in the East End of London in 1984—a time when the area did not house any other contemporary art galleries. Then called Interim Art, Paley’s gallery took on its current name in 2004.
Read MoreMaureen Paley moved to its current location on Herald Street, Bethnal Green, in 1999, and opened a project space called Morena di Luna in Hove in 2017.
From its inception, Maureen Paley has promoted international contemporary art with a focus on artists from Europe, America, and the United Kingdom. While working across diverse practices, many gallery artists share a common interest in social concerns. These include German artist Wolfgang Tillmans, whose has presented subjects such as pride parades and Black Lives Matter rallies in intimate photographs and moving image works; Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout and his deeply personal installation and collages; and Gillian Wearing, a Young British Artist with a penchant for tackling public and private spheres in her photographs and videos. These artists are represented alongside General Idea, an artist group known for its role in the development of discourses on queer identity and AIDS activism in art; Liam Gillick, whose sculptures and films interrogate socio-political and economic systems of the constructed world; and Daria Martin, who engages with the idea of empathy in films inspired by dreams.
Over the years, Maureen Paley has recruited young artists such as Paulo Nimer Pjota, hailing from Brazil, whose large, un-stretched canvases, pottery, and sheets of found metals address history, philosophy, and criminal symbology, amongst other concerns; Jordan-born Lawrence Abu Hamdan, who deploys performance, installation, photographs, essays, lectures, and visual and audio investigations to throw light on the significance of the act of listening in political environments; and Felipe Baeza, who engages with the themes of migration and queerness, among others, in his collages and prints.
Maureen Paley participates in Condo—a collaborative exhibition in which hosting galleries share their spaces with visiting galleries—and major international art fairs including Art Basel, Frieze New York, Frieze London, and Independent Brussels.
Wolfgang Tillmans, The State We’re In, A (2015). Exhibition view: Wolfgang Tillmans, Maureen Paley, London (9 June–7 August 2016). © Wolfgang Tillmans. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London.
Exhibition view: Anne Hardy, Rising Heat, Maureen Paley (18 February–28 March 2021). Courtesy Maureen Paley.
Ocula Insight | In Partnership with Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair Art021: Six Artwork Highlights By Ocula Advisory, Shanghai The Ocula Advisory team select six highlights from Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair's 8th edition.
Ocula Conversation Maureen Paley: A Trailblazing Gallerist By Rory Mitchell, London Maureen Paley reflects on the evolution of her gallery, which she opened in the front room of her Victorian terraced house in 1984 after moving to London from her native East Coast of the United States.
Ocula News Art Basel Launches Online Showrooms After Cancelling HK Show Hong Kong, 21 February 2020 With tens of millions in China confined to their homes, galleries and institutions have likewise pivoted to online events.
Ocula Conversation RoseLee Goldberg: Performance Then and Now By Fawz Kabra RoseLee Goldberg discusses the history of performance art and her ongoing support of artists in realising ambitious live performance work through the Performa Biennial, which is set to launch its eighth edition in New York on 1 November.
Related Press Turner Prize Nominees Consider the Injustices Brought About by Borders 14 November 2019, Hyperallergic MARGATE, England — Every year the Turner Prize judges trawl through dozens of exhibitions around the world to find new and fresh voices in contemporary art. The four nominees are then presented in a group show, and part-way through a winner is announced and awarded the £25,000 (~$32,000) prize. If the Turner Prize tries to capture the...
Related Press Nam June Paik today – part II 18 October 2019, ArtReview Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge) How did you first encounter the work of Nam June Paik? Paik accosted us in Paris, on the rue de Seine, in front of his hotel, La Louisiane, during the open market. Then he ran up to his room and brought us back a catalogue of his current show.
Related Press Turner Prize 2019 Review: The Roots of Our Political Crisis Go Far Beyond Brexit 27 September 2019, Frieze All four artists nominated for this year's Turner Prize draw on political histories: some wide-ranging, others highly localized; one contained within the last decade, another drawing on a text from the early 15th century. With one subtle exception, none of them are directly exploring the themes that emerged after the electoral shocks of 2016...
Related Press Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Earwitness Theatre 1 August 2019, The Brooklyn Rail We primacy vision: what we see, we take as truth. It may be cliché but clichés are colloquial truths, developed through relatable experiences that come to structure experience. When first drafting this review, I had begun: 'Imagine a silence...' but what is an image of silence? How can we even conceive of an image of an absent sense?
Related Video & Audio /Dialogues: Visibility | Invisibility — Sculpture in Everyday Space 14 September 2017, EXPO CHICAGO Nina Beier (Artist, STANDARD (OSLO), joségarcía, mx), Tom Burr (Artist, Bortolami Gallery). Moderated by Stephanie Cristello, Director of Programming, EXPO CHICAGO and Editor-in-Chief, THE SEEN What is the responsibility of formalism in the twenty-first century? This panel will trace the work of contemporary artists whose diverse sculptural...
