The Gallerists: Sadie Coles OBE and Angelina Volk

0:04Welcome to Chanel Connects, the Venice Biennale edition. It's important to be free So who was the fool who didn't recognize it all that time ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it is seduction, oh absolutely Just another woman trying to survive So who of them is lying? I wish that were the case Well let's face the terror of the new work then And this is what art is so good at I don't, do you prepare? No, no, no In this season of Chanel Connects we've taken up residence in Italy to go to the center of the art world. Listen in to the artists, curators, thinkers, and makers behind the Venice Biennale, the world's most important exhibition of contemporary art, now in its 60th edition.

0:49Each of our guests is focused on what matters most and what happens next. And now we get to listen in. I'm Yana Peele, Global Head of Arts and Culture at Chanel. Thank you for connecting with us. Tell where my head was at when you found me. Me and you went to hell and back just to find peace. In this episode, we connect with Sadie Kull's OBE and Angelina Volk, both esteemed gallerists and virtuosos of contemporary art. Sadie Kull's HQ is a world-renowned gallery that hosts prestigious exhibitions from artists like Sarah Lucas, Matthew Barney, and Urs Fischer. Emmeline was co-founded by Angelina in 2017 in London's Shoreditch, just around the corner from where we are today, and it's been pushing the boundaries of how art is presented and perceived ever since.

1:42Angelina represents artists like Nikita Gale, Carol Palchuk, and Alvaro Barrington. Alvaro is also represented by Sadie Cole's HQ, but more on that later. Sadie and Angelina share their love of Venice in the Biennale, reveal the unusually collegiate nature of London gallerists, and discuss the challenges of representing artists today. To kick things off, our moderator Penny Martin starts by asking them what their job title actually is.

2:18Gallery, gallerist, dealer, curator, they seem interchangeable sometimes. times what is the difference and which one are you Angelina? I would say gallerist for myself I'm sure Sadie would say the same. I wouldn't actually. Would you know my mother said that gallerist is not a proper word so I think I would probably just say art dealer. Then as an art dealer why is it important for you to attend the Venice Biennale? Biennials have a changing have had a changing role. The first one I came to was in 1993. And in that long, long period, their function has changed, the size of them has changed. But they still remain large international events where you can take the pulse of what's happening, sort of zeitgeist monitor, really.

3:10You know, to a certain extent, art fairs have taken some of that away because in 1993, the landscape was very different. and the art fairs stole a bit of the thunder of biennials because they also became places where you could sample the zeitgeist of what was going on internationally, what's being looked at, what's being talked about. But in a way, the unique thing about Venice is that within the Giardini, you have the biennial show, which is a curated show, but then you have the pavilions, which are curated by other national curators and organisations, and then you have all these peripheral events in major museums and palazzos.

3:51So it's just a very, very, very large, increasingly large and rich platter from which you can look at things. And every year it feels bigger. And I was just thinking about 1993, for instance. Can you describe what it was like then? There were definitely a lot less periphery events in palazzos and sponsored events. So it was much more focused on the Giardini, on things that were going on in the Giardini. but there were of course things that have changed enormously like I would say that it was very much more about men, male curators, male artists and it was very much more focused on art from the West.

4:31It definitely reinforced a kind of Western-centric narrative which was a I think up until really 2015 was a very fixed narrative and one that has been opened up since And I mean, I don't have this many, many years of biennial going experience to reflect on. But the first biennial I went to was in 2015. And that was Okwe and Bezars, the late Nigerian curator. And I think we see the way that that's opened up the biennial now. What are you hoping to experience at this year's Biennale Lan? Each curator brings a very different perspective. And Adriana Pedrosa has, we all knew on the boat here, literally, that we were going to be finding discoveries because his whole proposal is very much about global south and about foreigners.

5:22And foreigners are defined as people who are not necessarily or haven't traditionally necessarily been at a central platform. So there was always going to be this sense of discovery. And I think that's really happened in a very big way this year. Can you give us some examples of what you've seen so far that are an expression of that? The work of Miguel Rojas, who's a Colombian artist, which were these photographs taken throughout the 70s through a kind of peephole in a bathroom stall of various moments of intimacy across cinemas in Bogota, were at the time illegal sexual encounters between men.

6:00But they're blurry and delicate and tender and voyeuristic and kind of open up the politics of looking. But those were incredible. I love those. What about you, Sadie? There was a fantastic, enormous biro drawing by a woman, Madge Gill, from 1936, who is in the collection of Walthamstow Public Library, which is somewhat remarkable. But that was amazing. And that was quite a surprise. For my part, I've been coming 10 years. So I suppose I've seen five or so biennales. And I'll be truly honest, I never really knew where I was, where I was meant to go. But I didn't really understand the three pillars and what the Arsenale was to the Giardini, etc.

6:44It took a long time for me to find my way around the geography of it. I wonder, as old hands, what's your strategy? Do you go around it in a set sequence like a pit pony down the mine or do you freestyle? I find I do tick off all the big national pavilions, but it's very word of mouthy, especially now it's got so enormous. And so there are certain things I would really seek out. And then project like Nebula, which is the foundation for between art and film. And that's very exceptional new commissions of contemporary artists. So yeah, I think there are no hard and fast rules, but the main thing is to keep your ears open.

7:25How about you, Angelina? Do you do a lot of prep or do you? I usually have a strategy. I usually commit the first day to the international exhibition because that requires like a couple of days to sink in and you then have the week to kind of discuss that with everyone. And that's in a way the thing that requires the most digestion. Do you make any room for escape? People seem to have amazing recommendations. Everybody you speak who has one thing that they go to sort of recalibrate and then come back in. What's yours? All of mine are food. Yeah, I was just going to say, Tramitsini is mine. Like I always like to go to, I always have lunch at Da Ivo on the first day because it's so delicious.

8:02And then I usually go to Arturo's. I mean, it's all food-based because it's so fun. People watching is really fun here. A power breakfast at one of the big hotels is always super fun because you can see who's seeing who and what's going on. I had a breakfast at the Gritty this morning and it was super fascinating. What else? Yeah, mine is Tremantini all the way. I have my spot. I go there every day. Vintage fashion stores are amazing. There's a great vintage fashion store. There's one right near the Gritty Palace. It has incredible old Burberry Macs and Hermes shoes. There's one that I love, which is tiny.

8:42It's basically one little table in a set of closets around it called L 'Armadio di Cocol Vintage, which is right across from De Chiesa di Santa Maria di Giglio, which is great. You heard it here first, fashion fanatics. For the benefit of somebody that can't quite picture what makes up your work, can you give us a, there are of course no typical days, but can you give us a sort of day in the life and what might you be doing? So there's a lot of problem solving, but there's enormous pleasure in all the conversations one is having all day. Talking to artists is amazing because they just see the world in a different way and they can open your eyes and take you off on a journey that is like the biggest event you've ever been on.

9:32Sometimes terrifying, sometimes financially reckless, all of that. It's pretty magical. It's a pretty magical job. It's not luxury goods either. That's the other thing. Of course, we both have shops. Let's face it, they're shops. We're shopkeepers. That's fine. But it's not luxury goods. It's a completely different kind of exchange that is going on. It's often an exchange of ideas, really. Yeah, it's a cultural good. Of course, selling art is part of our job. And I think it is something really comprehensive that involves, of course, exhibition making, which for me is a huge part of what we do.

10:13I love doing that. But there's so much, yeah, as Sadie said, that's beyond that from producing catalogs to really being deeply, deeply ingrained in the artistic process with your artists. Well, that's it. It's one thing to be responsible and to fight for your artists. But then you've also got to decide what would be best for the artwork, where it should go, which isn't just a case of just selling to anyone, is it? You have to make sure that it has a chance to be in museum collections and will be protected and all those things too. Yeah, you have to do your very best in that regard. And of course, the ultimate goal would be a museum collection.

10:47But the definition of museum these days has broadened. And there are many private institutions of very, very high quality that rival the seriousness of a national collection and certainly have more buying power. So that definition has really changed. I would say, though, that I kind of, I wish that in the media that the discussion around art and the art market was less about the transactional side, because as Angelina just said, you know, this is ideas and it's culture. It's so much more than just the price that something reached at auction or the record that a young painter just made. You know, it's so much more than that.

11:30there's something that unites you quite literally that you share an artist how does that work actually quite wonderfully yeah it's really fun yeah it's a bit of an un what people always consider a bit unconventional because said artist alvaro barrington has multiple galleries with even within the same city and many more galleries and is perhaps the norm for for an artist at that stage in his career. I think while there's much that reunites us in spirit, it's to Sadie's and in Soho and St. James and in Mayfair, we're in Shoreditch in East London. So it's a very different set of conditions and a very different way of exhibition making and to treat that site specifically.

12:13I mean, what Alvar always says is the 10 minutes before you enter an exhibition are as important for conditioning you to experience that art as the space itself. So So, yeah, walking through Shoreditch on Shoreditch High Street is a very different kind of mental space than walking down Davies Street. I mean, I think Alvaro is very interested in the idea of community. And of course, by showing with lots of different galleries, he's plugging into lots of different communities. You know, of course, we share some collectors and some colleagues, but we also have different contacts and colleagues and connections.

12:47So he is taking advantage of all of those things. And he's also very interested in challenging the conventions, perhaps, within the art world. And I'm very interested in that. You painted as a picture of the art world when you joined it as being quite exclusive, but not literally just in commercial or maybe class terms or whatever, but also just there weren't that many women. Is there more of an informal mentoring atmosphere, do you think, now? Yeah, I think perhaps the homogenization of the art market has really meant that younger galleries or galleries and mid-tier galleries have kind of reached out to each other, especially over the pandemic, to kind of try and figure out how to best solve the depressing day-to-day problems that we all have.

13:37And I also think that's true in regard to the auction houses, because the auction houses traditionally weren't interested in new art. They would generally have not put things into auction that were less than five years old. But now their practice is completely, they'll just take anything they want. So that has changed a lot. And I think that basically that means that those galleries who are neither the top, top tier or are operating as sort of sole traders, so to speak, are reaching out to each other to try and share resources, share information. Don't you think? Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. I don't know if it's unique to London.

14:18I always feel like in London it's very, it feels very collegial and very collaborative. I also feel like there's so many of my colleagues, both who run galleries themselves, but also who work at more established galleries who provide an amazing support network. We all help each other. We all introduce clients to each other. We all love each other's artists, sometimes collect each other's artists. it's really also an acknowledgement that we're not operating in a vacuum, as is the case with culture, as is the case with how artists make work. No one is this kind of myth of an artist genius locked away in their studio, making work that just comes to them from the ether is just not really how it works.

14:56Zeta, you've had artists representing their respective nations in the Biennale before. Does that make for a different week for you? Yes, it's enormous. I mean, because It's usually the culmination of a strong number of years of somebody growing their practice and that being recognized by international collectors, curators, museum people, critics. And it feels like a massive kind of platform, Venice, because it really is a big platform. It feels like the whole world is going to be here or watch. and the responsibility of assisting the official body to help them produce the show is quite onerous on the galleries.

15:39And then there's a massive amount of kind of social support that you need to give to the artist and parties, all of it. It's a very, very big celebration. Can you say who you've brought? Well, the big one for me was Sarah Lucas because that was, you know, 30 years of working together and that was very, very emotional. She represented Britain and that was a very emotional moment for all of us because we couldn't believe we'd got there. So that really felt like something, yeah. You mentioned the slow burn of a biennale and the fact that it doesn't necessarily realise all of its ideas immediately.

16:20And I know that you've mentioned the 2022 Milk of Dreams Biennale, Cecilia Alemani's show, which of course incorporated so many women artists into its programme. Can you say something about what the effect of that was? I think that these major shows that are so carefully curated by such important curators inevitably shift the conversation one way or another. So you will see exhibitions popping up in other museums in the next two years from Adriano Pedarosa's wonderful, deeply researched project, as you did from Elamani's incredible Milk of Dreams. But pretty much every single one I've been to since 1993, that has happened.

17:09And I think that is a wonderful thing. You know, the sense of refocusing on women artists from Cecilia's exhibition, you know, has bore incredible fruit. And you only have to look at like a list of all of the exhibitions in New York today to see that. Yeah, I mean, I think it takes for those discourses to really materialize, that can take decades. And those conversations go on for decades. I think that's why it's categorically so different from an art fair. I mean, the number of times actually this week that I've heard people sort of stumble over their words and say, oh, have you been to the fair?

17:46it's just something completely different because it is about creating a conversation and that metabolizes over many years to come because it's an exhibition history in that it just builds on itself and the same goes for the curatorial premises and provocations of the international exhibition. And if there was somebody listening that didn't realize that they could be part of this and they could support somebody and start building a collection who might you advise them this year to take a look at if they wanted to start their collection here? Wow, that's an almost impossible question because it completely depends on the individual, what speaks to them, what resonates to them.

18:25I think if you're interested in getting involved, one of the very best ways is to get involved with an institution because most institutions have patrons, organizations, and they can be very entry-level, not asking people for hundreds of thousands, but entry-level kind of schemes where you join a group of like-minded people who will also be learning or will pass on the knowledge that they have to you. And often that group of people is led by the curatorial team of the institution. So they can advise in terms of what you might want to look at or what exhibitions are interesting or what artists are interesting, not just within their own institution.

19:07And that's a very, very nice way of accessing a community and accessing knowledge and having some guidance. Most people, once they've done that for a while, they're off on their own because they develop their own taste. They make a connection. They go to Angelina's gallery, they meet her, and then they realize that that's the person that they would like to have guide them further and show them other artists or, you know, help build their collection. But I would suggest getting involved with an institution is a very good way. We're going to end with our last question, which we're asking all our guests on Chanel Connects.

19:46And it is, what are you excited about in the future of art?

19:53I'm excited about my generation of artists and curators who are just at the very beginning of a lifelong journey of engaging with the world through their work. And also, of course, at the center of that is the artists that I work with. And I mean, it's an amazing, exciting thing to have no idea, it'd be completely unpredictable what they're going to do next. And it's just endlessly exciting. I think what excites me at the moment is the same thing that excited me right from the beginning. It's the fluidity of everything. Everything changes all the time. And in the world that I'm in, you know, what is being talked about one biennial changes the next biennial.

20:37So you're constantly looking at a new flow of ideas, a new flow of kind of mapped points, completely changing shape of things that are at that moment important socially, politically, culturally, gender wise. You know, I mean, I think it's very, very important to stay open to change. And that's actually one of the most fantastic things about being in the world that we're in. Perfect place to stop. Thank you so much, Sadie and Angelina. Thank you to Sadie Coles and Angelina Volk. The Venice Biennale has a rich history dating back to 1895. So we asked attendees from this biennale if they could travel back in time, which biennale from the past would they attend and why?

21:29I think one biennale I would have loved seeing is the one in 1985 with Aldo Rossi and his structure Teatro del Mondo, which was simple theater built on a raft that cruised around Venice and the Piazza San Marco. and then left the city to sail along the Adriatic Sea. I would choose the first one because I want to see the difference between then and now and how contemporary maybe it was at the time. Yeah, the first one. I would go back to the 2019 Biennale because it was the first time Ghana had a pavilion. I'm Ghanaian, so that was a pretty big deal. One that springs to mind as particularly important would be the Biennale of 1948, which was the first Biennale after the Second World War.

22:27And that was just such an important Biennale, not just for the fact that it was about Venice becoming international again after the Second World War and fascism, but just for some of the things that happened. The fact that Peggy Guggenheim showed her collection here before she had a museum and was able to show Jackson Pollock in post-war Europe. And of course, we know that that went on to trigger her basing herself here and then eventually her collection staying here. I do have a Biennale that I wish I had seen. And that was because when I was researching the kind of like for the international, the solidarity movements.

23:02And it was 1974 that I think the whole Biennale was dedicated to Chile. And I kind of like romanticized that as a very kind of fascinating addition. There were three I really liked. One was Cecilia's two years ago. And Massimiliano, I thought he did a really good architecture. And I did also like Okui. I'm not sure I could pick out one. Maybe it was Leonore Carrington. The surrealism. I mean, it's just opened up to like the feminine sensibility. The ladies had it in 2022. I think the magic is seeing your first biennale when you don't really understand the way the national pavilions work, the international exhibition works with the group show, the fact that you get to be part of this moment that defines the zeitgeist.

23:54But today is pretty good. Thank you so much to all of our contributors who joined us in Venice for the 60th edition of the Biennale. Thank you for listening to Chanel Connects, the Venice Biennale edition. Now the number five is very important in the house of Chanel. So please consider giving us five stars on whatever platform you're listening to us. Please follow the show so you don't miss an episode. Other episodes you might enjoy in the Chanel Connects archive are Saltburn director Emerald Fennell and Gillian Flynn, two women at the heart of filmmaking today, or Eliza Hittman Garrett Bradley and chief curator of film at MoMA, Rajendra Roy, who discuss how everyday women navigate systems that are often stacked against them.

24:43You can find them and all previous episodes on chanel.com. Next time on Chanel Connect, we meet Julien Creuset, the first French Caribbean artist to represent France at the Biennale. Julien talks about his immersive exhibition fusing sculptural film Music and More, his roots in Martinique, and how hip-hop inspired his love for poetry. Here, Tate International Curator of Art Alvin Lee sits down with Julian and sets the scene. I'm curious about the setup of your studio. Can you describe your studio settings for us? My studio looks like a secret kitchen. Thank you for listening. Looking forward to seeing you back next week.

25:37Thank you.