DEPARTURES
DEPARTURES NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH 44 CULTURE Carpenters Workshop Gallery founders Loïc Le Gaillard (left) and Julien Lombrail Setting the Scene The forward-thinking team behind Carpenters Workshop Gallery is pulling out all the stops, tapping best-in-industry names to create a groundbreaking – and accessible – art hub in London’s Notting Hill. by Claire Wrathall BENJAMIN BACCARANI
BENJAMIN BACCARANI “AS FAR AS THE GALLERY model goes, we are coming to the end of an era,” says Loïc Le Gaillard. “Just selling expensive art or furniture is no longer enough.” Collectors and prospective buyers “need an experience. They want to be challenged.” It’s an unexpected admission from a man who has spent the past 17 years running a gallery. Back in 2006, he and his childhood friend Julien Lombrail founded Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London, probably the foremost dealer in the sort of editioned sculptural furniture that has come to be known as functional art or collectable design, with outposts in his native Paris, New York and Los Angeles. Historically, its principal showroom was in Mayfair. Henceforth, its clients will be expected to schlepp five miles west to a hinterland they’re optimistically calling “the Notting Hill area”, though a taxi from Mayfair may be faster than the 35-minute (2.75km) walk from Notting Hill Gate Underground. But do not be deterred. If he manages to realise what he’s envisioning, it should be worth the trip. Ladbroke Hall, as they are calling the new Carpenters Workshop Gallery HQ, was built at the start of the 20th century as the offices for the Sunbeam Talbot Motor Company, one of whose sports models was the first to hit 100 miles per hour. It’s a distinguished redbrick building in the heavily ornamented Beaux-Arts style, its interiors unexpectedly French. Once inside, the splendid wroughtiron staircase “reminds me of a Parisian hôtel particulier”, says Le Gaillard as we ascend to the gallery’s airy day-lit main exhibition space, as indeed does the herringbone parquet. “You can imagine Pierre Cardin coming down these stairs and welcoming his models.” It will launch with an exhibition of work by David Adjaye. “Normally he is an architect” – indeed he has masterminded this whole project – “but I’ve asked him to work on a body of limited-edition pieces, which are phenomenal,” alongside which there will be smaller shows Iconic Brazilian designer José Zanine Caldas’s pequi-wood Denuncia sculptural bench (1982), which is part of the launch exhibition at Ladbroke Hall of works by Joaquim Tenreiro and others from Carpenters Workshop’s stable of 35 or so artists and designers, among them the likes of Atelier Van Lieshout, Virgil Abloh, Pablo Reinoso and Studio Job. So far, so predictable. Despite Le Gaillard’s earlier pronouncements, “It is ultimately a commercial gallery. But I want to break this sense that a gallery is only for the elite or for rich people. I want to make it feel open to everyone and for local kids to be curious and to push the door and say: ‘What’s going on here?’” To this end, he has conceived a whole arts centre, reminiscent in ambition of what the Institute of Contemporary Arts was in its heyday: a complex involving exhibitions and a programme of dance, theatre, poetry, film, photography (there’ll also be a studio) and especially music, to which end there is both a triple-height performance space and a splendid galleried concert hall with a Steinway, acoustics modelled by Bang & Olufsen and the capacity to seat 180. “I love jazz, so there’ll be one or two jazz nights a week. I’m adamant about that,” he says. It’s his place, after all. Otherwise “It will range from hip-hop nights to classical music,” not least periodic 10-day festivals featuring “Steinway artists” – a starry roster of almost 2,000 world-class pianists. “They have amazing talent.” (And so they do.) Too often, he continues, “the format used to present classical music is off-putting. We want to make it accessible to a younger public. And,” not missing a beat, “I want to do tango nights too. Post-pandemic people need to touch each other. We need to have fun.” To reinforce his commitment to music, there is also a recording studio that will be available not just to established musicians but to give “young people the opportunity to record professionally and have a chance to succeed. We’ve been very successful and we want to find ways to give back.” Behind it, there’ll be almost 1,200 square metres of lushly wooded garden – “big enough to play hide and seek 45 DEPARTURES
