The gallery programme began in 1984 in a Victorian terraced house in London’s East End. Initially named Interim Art the gallery changed its name to Maureen Paley in 2004 as a celebration of its 20th anniversary. Since September 1999 the gallery has been situated in its present location in Herald Street, Bethnal Green. From its inception the gallery’s aim has remained consistent: to promote great and innovative artists in all media.
Read MoreMaureen Paley was one of the first to present contemporary art in London’s East End and has been a pioneer of the current scene promoting and showing art from the USA and continental Europe as well as launching new talent from the UK. Gallery artists include Turner prize winners Wolfgang Tillmans, 2000, and Gillian Wearing, 1997, and Turner Prize nominees Liam Gillick, 2002, and Rebecca Warren, 2006. AA Bronson, General Idea and Peter Hujar have recently been added to the gallery’s roster along with Morgan Fisher and Tim Rollins and K.O.S. All of the gallery artists have exhibited widely in the UK and abroad.
Maureen Paley, the gallery’s founder and director, was born in New York, studied at Sarah Lawrence College, and graduated from Brown University before coming to the UK in 1977 where she completed her Masters at The Royal College of Art from 1978–1980.
Together with running the gallery Maureen Paley has also curated a number of large-scale public exhibitions. In 1994 she organised an exhibition of works by Felix Gonzales Torres, Joseph Kosuth and Ad Reinhardt at the Camden Arts Centre. In 1995 Wall to Wall was presented for the National Touring Exhibitions and appeared at the Serpentine Gallery, London, Southampton City Art Gallery and Leeds City Art Gallery showing wall drawings by international artists including Daniel Buren, Michael Craig-Martin, Douglas Gordon, Barbara Kruger, Sol Lewitt, and Lawrence Weiner. Maureen Paley also selected an exhibition of work by young British artists in 1996 called The Cauldron featuring Christine Borland, Angela Bulloch, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Steven Pippin, Georgina Starr and Gillian Wearing for the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust which was installed in their Studio space in Dean Clough, Halifax.
Ocula Conversation Maureen Paley: A Trailblazing Gallerist By Rory Mitchell, London After moving to London from her native East Coast of the United States, Maureen Paley opened her first gallery in the front room of her Victorian terraced house in 1984. She gave numerous international artists, including Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Mike Kelley, Charles Ray, and Christian Marclay their first exhibitions in London, quickly...
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 had long been invested in contemporary performance art before her founding of the inter-disciplinary arts organisation Performa in New York in 2004. Born in Durban, South Africa, Goldberg studied political science and fine arts at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and then art history at the Courtauld...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future By Stephanie Bailey, Okayama There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. This report explores some of these shows, concluding with Pierre Huyghe's Okayama Art Summit.
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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...
