SLG Central

About

The South London Gallery (SLG) is celebrating its 130th anniversary with the sale of a portfolio comprising limited edition prints (45 + 12 APs) by five leading international artists. Katharina Grosse has also made a limited edition print (100 + 20 APs) on fabric to mark this important moment in our history.

The SLG130 portfolio features new works by, Alvaro Barrington, Rashid Johnson, Gabriel Orozco, Christina Quarles and Haegue Yang.

The SLG130 portfolio prints and Katharina Grosse’s edition on fabric will be displayed along with other SLG editions and information about the history of the SLG at SLG Central, a pop-up space at 30 Old Burlington Street, to mark 130 years of the South London Gallery. The temporary gallery will be open 21 September – 17 October, and will be a part of the Cork Street Galleries’ Frieze Week.

The South London Gallery (SLG) opened to the public at its current location on Peckham Road in 1891. The Gallery evolved from a Working Men’s College founded by William Rossiter who was one of many 19th--century social reformers, philanthropists and artists who set out to improve not only housing and sanitation, but education and culture. The permanent site for the Gallery was partly secured thanks to fundraising by its influential Council which included the artists Sir Frederic Leighton, Edward Burne-Jones, G. F. Watts and Walter Crane. In the 1890s, the newspaper magnate and philanthropist John Passmore Edwards funded the addition of a Lecture Hall and Library to the rear of the Gallery where the Clore Studio now stands. In 2016 the artist Raqib Shaw donated a former fire station building to the SLG which opened to the public in 2018 following an award-winning restoration by 6a architects. The generosity of individual donors, trusts and foundations has allowed the Gallery to expand and flourish throughout its history.

Artists and philanthropists have therefore been at the heart of the Gallery since its foundation when its mission was to bring art to the people of south London, and to be free and open to all. This mission remains true today, albeit in recent decades with an international as well as local remit. It is particularly poignant, that six of the world’s leading international contemporary artists, all of whom have exhibited at the South London Gallery, have so generously made new works to raise funds in the midst of a global pandemic, to support the SLG following the most financially challenging period in its history.

SLG Central is generously supported by Cork Street Galleries.

Cork Street Galleries is an initiative from the Pollen Estate.

www.corkstreetgalleries.com

The SLG’s 130th anniversary online event is generously sponsored by Phillips. With thanks to our framing partner, Frame London.