Max Radford Gallery opens London showroom to get people "in front of real objects"

Max Radford Gallery has opened a permanent space in east London that shows collectible designs from its past shows, including pieces by Carsten in der Elst and Amelia Stevens.

Located in Hackney Downs, the showroom displays works that the gallery first showed at Belgium's Collectible design fair, as well as pieces from earlier exhibitions.

By combining works from different stages of its designers' careers, the gallery aims to showcase how the artists it works with have developed over the years.

"It's a privilege to be able to track a designer's development and change in their practice across a few pieces in the same space," founder Max Radford told Dezeen.

The gallery, which launched in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, focuses on emerging artists. By opening a physical space, it hopes to also help them reach a bigger audience.

"The Max Radford Gallery seeks to platform emerging creatives who are working in the grayscale between art and design with a London-centric focus," Radford said.

"This has always been the particular area that the gallery has been engaged with and stems from a need for physical spaces to see these types of works in London, rather than just on social media – as the only option was when the gallery was beginning."

Among the artists showing in the space are In der Elst, whom the gallery had previously included in its Hard Knocks show, and Stevens, who took part in Max Radford Gallery's exhibition at the Aram Gallery.

The new space also showcases furniture and accessories by designers Georgia Merritt, Fred Thompson, Grace Prince, Nic Sanderson, Inga Tilda, Eddie Olin, EJR Barnes, Ty Locke, LS Gomma, Natalia Tifantilyi, Andrew Pierce Scott, Louie Isaaman-Jones and Matthew Verdon.

Max Radford Gallery is now located in a minimalist studio, which its founder intends to keep as a paired-back space.

"The showroom is a beautiful white-painted studio space with just over half of the floor plan having triple height up to skylights, producing beautiful changing light across the day," Radford said.

"We haven't made any architectural changes to the space and are not sure that we will, potentially with the exception of some sort of temporary mezzanine in the triple height space for an exhibition-specific installation," he added.

By opening a permanent gallery, Radford wants to support London's community of emerging designers.

"It's for the community aspect that is introduced by the communal use of creative space; there is a burgeoning community of designers and artists in London with lots of crossovers through universities and workshops that support and raise up its members," he said.

"Facilitating a space for communities like this to express and interact seems like a key aspect to supporting what is going on here in London currently," he added.

He also hopes that the physical aspect of the space will encourage people to see design pieces in person.

"It's as simple as getting people in front of real objects, not just heavily retouched or rendered images of them," Radford concluded.

The photography is by Richard Round Turner.

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