London show brings 200 works by artists living in Iran
Nearly 200 works by about 100 artists living and working in Iran will take over a London gallery for eight days. The show opens on 19 September.
It is titled A Present Tense: Contemporary Artists Living and Working in Iran. It runs until 26 September at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London, according to The Art Newspaper.
The line-up was put together with around 20 galleries and art spaces in Iran. That shared effort makes it an unusually large group show for the London venue.
The idea grew out of conversations between Salman Matinfar, founding director of Ab-Anbar Gallery in London, and Orkideh Daroodi, founder of O Gallery in Tehran. Matinfar closed his gallery in Tehran and opened Ab-Anbar's London space in 2020. Daroodi runs O Gallery in Tehran.
Ab-Anbar has offered its rooms for the show and waived its commission, the share a gallery normally keeps when a work sells. That arrangement leaves more of any sale price with the artists and the galleries that represent them in Iran.
Works are priced from around £200 to £3,000. Buyers pay the ticket price on the label. There are no auction fees on top.
What makes this stand out is the teamwork. Twenty galleries rarely pool their artists into a single short show abroad. Here the London gallery provides the walls, while the selection comes from colleagues in Iran.
