beatriceridleyart

beatriceridleyart Art Advisor, Art Curator and Art Club Events Organiser- helping my clients discover, source, renew & experience art.

On the Chisenhale Gallery Advisory Board, amazing not for profit in London that launched 26 Turner Prize Nominees and 4 TP winners.

This morning Christie's King Street - an artist talk with Arts Council Collection — one of the most significant public a...
20/06/2026

This morning Christie's King Street - an artist talk with Arts Council Collection — one of the most significant public art collections in the world, a “museum without walls”, belonging to guess who, the British people.
, Director of the Arts Council Collection, led a fascinating conversation with artists Suleman Aqeel Khilji and Vanessa Raw Both artists steeped in landscape — not as backdrop, but as reverence. Something bigger than the self.
Being an eco nut, I loved what i saw as their homage to the beauty of our world,  to their respective immediate environments:  Vanessa’s rich, saturated British greens alongside feminine, fertile, Mother Nature figures, and Suleman’s sun-bleached primary reds and yellows distilling light, arid landscape burning with the heat of Lahore. 
Two different geographies. Drawing life from them in art form.
And Vanessa —love that you channelled every last drop of your triathlon energy wholesale into your art. And boy do we see the results. Not least with one work auctioned by Christies this Thursday and the other firmly in the  Arts Council Collection. Congrats lovely 🙌❤️Close Encounters: Figuration, Painting and Landscape brings together artists from or based in the UK, hanging at Christie’s alongside the Zabludowicz Collection ahead of Thursday’s sale.
Thank you Christie’s, Alona Pardo, Suleman Aqeel Khilji and Vanessa Raw.  

This morning - spotted this one and immediately thought of Carrie Scott - Art Historian + Curator’ challenging take on ...
20/06/2026

This morning - spotted this one and immediately thought of Carrie Scott - Art Historian + Curator’ challenging take on it. Loved hearing your angle. Does it make you see Richard Prince in a different light hearing this?

With at his show Fata Morgana NISO this morning — all about optical mirage: what you see shifts depending on where you ...
19/06/2026

With at his show Fata Morgana NISO this morning — all about optical mirage: what you see shifts depending on where you stand, a blend of bendings of reality. Love that Haddon Grant has made instability the subject and the structure of the work.
He builds and welds the metal cases himself, enclosing sculpture behind corrugated glass, an artist fabricating not just the work but the conditions of its perception.
On until 18 July at NISO, New Cavendish Street.

Measured confidence at Art Basel. Not a feeding frenzy, but not the jitters of recent years either. Hauser & Wirth place...
18/06/2026

Measured confidence at Art Basel. Not a feeding frenzy, but not the jitters of recent years either.

Hauser & Wirth placed over $65 million on opening day alone — led by a $35m Picasso painted en plein air in 1963. Thaddaeus Ropac cleared nearly $9 million in the first hour. Many are saying it’s “safe to say yes again.” Gagosian sold this 1984 Willem de Kooning to a private collection in Asia for a high seven-figure sum. Surrounded by a monumental Henry Moore, a Francis Bacon portrait, and a new Albert Oehlen self-portrait nearly 3 metres tall.

Flight to quality continues — with a surge in historical works, not just contemporary. The new Basel Exclusive programme (withholding works from digital previews to draw people to the fair in person) is a telling response to the market’s evolution..

Loving the public commissions by Nairy Baghramian and Ibrahim Mahama in the city squares, and Ruba Katrib’s debut edition of Unlimited.
Always watching closely.

Recognition needed on a different topic. Next Wednesday I am hosting our Quorum Group at ​ for a private morning viewing...
05/06/2026

Recognition needed on a different topic.
Next Wednesday I am hosting our Quorum Group at ​ for a private morning viewing of Illuminations — a remarkable exhibition developed with Sam Fogg as part of London Gallery Weekend.

Medieval stained glass alongside Paul Klee​, Piet Mondrian and Brice Marden​ amongst others. ​Just because the breakthroughs we associate with twentieth-century abstraction were already alive in the windows of medieval Europe.
Can’t wait to see you ✨

Last night, I had the enormous privilege of opening Taking Pride in Art 2026 at Capital Group’s London offices — a show ...
04/06/2026

Last night, I had the enormous privilege of opening Taking Pride in Art 2026 at Capital Group’s London offices — a show I’ve been co-curating for months. Incredibly proud of CG for championing this show over the last 9 years.

58 works. 45 artists. Every single one LGBTQIA+, making work that speaks to the Pride experience, visibility and joy. In a world where more countries are criminalising love every year, not fewer, this matters. You all rocked ✨ .carreira .olszewski .kane.art .khan.artist 🙏

Really excited about this one. TARWUK at White Cube Mason’s Yard this July — the pseudonymous Croatian-American duo whos...
27/05/2026

Really excited about this one. TARWUK at White Cube Mason’s Yard this July — the pseudonymous Croatian-American duo whose densely layered, cinematic paintings weave art history, personal mythology into a raw contemporary bewitching beauty. Their first show at White Cube, and one of my most anticipated openings of the summer. Can’t wait to see it.

📍 White Cube Mason’s Yard, St James’s, London 🗓️ 9 July – 15 August 2026

Toured “Scene XVII: pity this busy monster” this morning with the incomparable — poet, orator, force of nature. The sho...
22/05/2026

Toured “Scene XVII: pity this busy monster” this morning with the incomparable — poet, orator, force of nature.
The show holds up a mirror to our dual nature: the monster isn’t “other”, it’s us. All of us. The capacity for good and for destruction lives in the same body. What we choose — or neglect — or are wilfully blind to - is everything. Especially loved the disquiet of ’s beguilingly compelling work, the nostalgia of and ’s searing depiction of dysfunctional countries as he sees them: Statue of Liberty all but effaced — overborne by a fearsome overhead, Justice blinded and contorted beneath it. Seven artists making the unbearable visible, also including . At 12 Porchester Place until 26 June.
Hats off.


grahamsilveriamartin
contemporaryart

Two things that feel like they might just be in conversation with each other.Last night: drinks and a talk with Oliver B...
20/05/2026

Two things that feel like they might just be in conversation with each other.

Last night: drinks and a talk with Oliver Bullough, at our Quorum Network event with the brilliant Founder Janine Stow. Oliver’s new book Everybody Loves Our Dollars picks up where Moneyland left off — a forensic, jaw-dropping account of how Western financial institutions have become the infrastructure of choice for illicit money. Not the villains we imagine. Us. The discomfort was on point.
He shone the light on the fact that no one uses cash anymore, but the amount of cash in circulation is not only in the billions but growing, on the fact that the US is complicit in enabling dirty money globally — exporting dollars is one of the US’s most profitable exports ($1-2 trillion circulating outside the US), that the compliance within western democracies is toothless, and so much more..

Right on cue, this Friday I’m also heading to “Pity this busy monster” at 12 Porchester Place — seventeenth Scene, a group show taking its inspiration from an EE Cummings poem about “manunkind” and our monstrous propensity for corruption and destruction. Seven artists, one very timely premise.

Money laundering one night, art about the beast within us all the next. Does that feel about right for the current moment?

Last night celebrating s launch of its Africa and Diaspora Acquisition Committee — promoting the artists, the stories, ...
17/05/2026

Last night celebrating s launch of its Africa and Diaspora Acquisition Committee — promoting the artists, the stories, the voices that deserve to be in permanent collections, and have deserved it for so long. The start of an exciting new story and an invitation for as many of you to get involved to promote, donate & support this incredible initiative.
Gus Casely-Hayford, Director of and Dr Madeleine Haddon, Senior Curator of V&A East, inspired us all. Loved meeting you all , , , , Linda Essumai, can’t wait to plot lots of things together.
An enormous thanks to , and for including me in this, not least to the wonderful Ariel White-Tsimikalis for hosting us so beautifully. Magical eve ✨

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