Louise Hayward on Cork Street, curating and Lisson Gallery’s esteemed history

“It’s impossible to quantify how art has enriched my life,” declares Louise Hayward, Senior Director at Lisson Gallery. “I’ve worked closely with Ryan Gander for almost 20 years and he is someone who sees the world in such a lateral way. Spending time with him or John Akomfrah or Marina Abramović has opened up a world of thinking to me – they can’t help but change the way you view the world and your place within it.”

Ryan Gander The thermals made me lazy, or The squatters (Smoky meet Monk’s Deflated Sculpture II (2009)), 2020
Wood, latex, resin, synthetic fur, paint, animatronics
10.2 x 50.8 x 34.3 cm
4 x 20 x 13 1/2 in
© Ryan Gander, courtesy Lisson Gallery

“There is nothing better than having a great conversation, whether it’s with a museum or a collector, about an artist’s work and seeing the transference of the idea and the excitement into someone else. Calling the artist afterwards, saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got great news, this museum is going to buy your work,’ is the best phone call in the world.”
Hayward’s relationship with Lisson Gallery goes back eleven years – as she says “for a very good reason.”

“It’s an incredible, very global, gallery to work at and there is a great sense of camarade-rie [here], with such close-knit relationships across the team.”

“Nicholas Logsdail, the founder of Lisson Gallery, had always been a bit of a mentor to me as a young gallerist. He was very supportive and incredibly insightful in how to work with emerging artists. So, when I closed my gallery Store in 2008, it was quite a natural move to go and work for him.”

While Nicholas has stepped back, today his son Alex, who has worked all his life in galleries, carries on the family line as Executive Director.

Founded in London, 1967, in a derelict, triple-floor space on Bell Street, Lisson Gallery was an important supporter of minimal and conceptual art. Early exhibitions showed artists including Derek Jarman, Yoko Ono, Sol LeWitt and Dom Sylvester Houédard, defining the spirit and ethos that still remains today. These were also the first of many UK debuts for major American Minimal and Conceptual artists. This continued into the 70s, when Nicholas Logsdail invited 20 artists (featuring many the gallery still works with, such as Lawrence Weiner and Richard Wentworth) to pick a blank wall in the gallery and realise a new, experimental, site-specific work.

Today Lisson continues its support of younger names through Laure Prouvost, Haroon Mirza and Cory Arcangel. It has added too the estates of those passed: Hélio Oiticica and Leon Polk Smith. As time moves on, the gallery underscores an artist-led stance.

“Every gallery has its identity and I think Lisson’s founding principles still hold very true,” proclaims Hayward. “Our commitment is very much to the artist, and we will work in whatever way is most successful to nurture that artist’s career and support them over a long period of time. There is always a long-term strategy and plan. It’s about a place of extraordinary cultural legacy and production into the future. We need to keep holding onto art as being the remarkable cultural bearer that it is.”

“Lisson has always been a gallery about innovation, working with artists in all different types of media, from sculpture to performance to film to painting. There has always been that diversity within the gallery programme, and that continues. I think that is something very inspirational within the gallery itself, for those who work with the artists and also for our audiences and collectors.”

Pressed for highlights – there are many – Lisson’s 50th anniversary in 2017 shines as a beacon, presenting an off-site group exhibition ‘EVERYTHING AT ONCE’ at the Store Studios on London’s Strand. The event served as a journey through the gallery’s past, present and future, alongside the launch of a major publication surveying all historic 500 exhibitions.

In the same year, Alex Logsdail spearheaded the gallery’s New York opening, under the High Line, designed by Studio MDA and Studio Christian Wassmann.

“We’ve complemented this space by opening a new gallery right next door [508 West 24th Street] to expand our programming abilities,” Hayward continues. “These openings are both examples of intrepid moments in the gallery’s history, where huge change was initiated during unpredictable times – from construction on the new New York space following the 2008 crisis, to the commissioning of the Tony Fretton designed Lisson Street when the UK was recovering from a major recession. Amongst all the challenges of 2020, we have also opened at Cork Street in Mayfair and East Hampton, alongside launching our online initiatives, from an exhibition platform to an alternate reality app.”

Lisson arrived at 22 Cork Street for October’s successful Frieze week. Furthering a subliminal message of London’s relevance, the gallery now has as many outposts in the capital as it does internationally. The Cork Street space allows Lisson to pursue a more instinctive and reactive programme, working on a shorter turnaround. It’s perfectly suited to today’s climate.

“I think what adds extra excitement about London is the addition of the auction houses having major sales here,” Louise elaborates. “It contributes to the city’s perception worldwide as a centre for contemporary art.”

While we speak, Cory Arcangel’s ‘Totally Fucked’, a historic work on a hacked Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge, is showing at Cork Street. In the work, the iconic Super Mario character finds himself frustrated and destined to fail, stuck on a block and surrounded by a sea of blue pixels. The work is viewable from the street and downloadable as a ROM file from the artist’s website and Github account.

Installation view of Cory Arcangel, Totally Fucked at Lisson Gallery, London, 12 November – 19 December 2020 © Cory Arcangel, Courtesy Lisson Gallery

“I’m currently working with Ekow Eshun on a group show for 2021,” Hayward reveals, “as well as a solo exhibition by John Akomfrah at our Tony Fretton building [67 Lisson Street]. It seems very relevant and interesting to create a dialogue with that exhibition, using one of John’s early works, ‘Signs of Empire’ from 1983; having that as a starting point for a larger conversation amongst a group of UK-based artists, looking at notions of the imperialistic monument, and the dismantling of that over the last 40 years. Younger generations are seeing that they have the collective will to pull down monuments and there has been a shift, placing a different understanding of authority within a younger demographic. Which is very, very interesting. It has a lot to do with social media; the individual becoming collective.”

AKOM120002,John Akomfrah,Peripeteia, 2012,Single channel HD colour video, 5.1 sound,17 minutes 28 seconds

Louise states that, in terms of profile, “Cork Street’s history is second to none. It has an art identity in the same way that Savile Row has a tailoring identity, and there are wonderful galleries such as Goodman, with an exceptional programme, and Waddington. It will be interesting what happens over the next couple of years – it’s a street that culminates in the Royal Academy. We’ve seen people enjoy grabbing a coffee from the coffee cart, no-tice our gallery and think, ‘Wonderful, I’ll come in.’”

Lisson Gallery, 22 Cork Street, London W1. The gallery will be open late until 8pm on Friday 4th December, as part of Mayfair Art Weekend’s Winter Gallery Hop. Cory Arcangel: ‘Totally Fucked’ runs until 19th December. For current visiting protocol, visit this page.