Over the last few years, a number of gallery closures – including TJ Boulting, Marlborough and Simon Lee – have stoked fears of an art market slump in London. In a move that may help to quell these anxieties, Maureen Paley is opening a fourth location on October 3. This expansion will see her eponymous gallery, long regarded as a bastion of the east London art scene, take over the first floor of an industrial building at 4 Herald Street in Bethnal Green.
The new space sits just across the street from Paley’s flagship location on Three Colts Lane and holds special significance for the gallerist. In the 2000s, it formed a section of the London studio of Wolfgang Tillmans, the Turner Prize-winning German photographer and one of the biggest names on the gallery’s roster. The artist moved most of his production to Berlin in 2011.
“When a part of Tillmans’s former studio recently presented itself as a potential location to expand, we saw this as a wonderful opportunity to occupy a beloved space near to our current gallery that adds a new dimension,” Paley tells Broadsheet. “He was the most logical artist to begin with.”
Tillmans has a longstanding relationship with the gallery, which has represented him for more than 30 years. In 1993, Maureen Paley – then called Interim Art – presented one of his first solo shows. Now, the gallery inaugurates its new space with its 11th Tillmans exhibition, coming on the heels of a large-scale retrospective of the photographer’s work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris this summer. “Everything fell into place as if by magic,” Paley says.
The show presents new and old artworks in three of Paley’s east London galleries, showcasing Tillmans’s experimentation across media – from his famed abstract photographs to recent video projects and installations. Tillmans is also a musician, and the exhibition shares its title with the artist’s latest album, Build From Here, released in 2024.
One of the most influential artists working today, Tillmans was among Maureen Paley’s first and greatest successes. But he’s far from the only one: the New York-born dealer has established an international reputation for championing major contemporary artists such as Rebecca Warren, Felipe Baeza, and the Turner Prize winners Gillian Wearing and Lawrence Abu Hamdan.
Paley was one of the first gallerists to set up shop in east London, opening her Beck Road space in 1984. The gallery relocated to Bethnal Green in 1999, before launching a second exhibition space, Morena di Luna, in Hove in 2017, and a smaller third location, Studio M, in Shoreditch in 2020. The 4 Herald Street expansion gives Paley more flexibility to stage exhibitions across multiple spaces and run several shows at once.
Wolfgang Tillmans: Build From Here runs from October 3 until December 20, 2025.
