Thinking bigger: gallery stalwarts Sadie Coles, Maureen Paley and Stuart Shave on why they're expanding to new London spaces

"Everything I do tends to be instinctive rather than calculated, but I've been looking for a different kind of space with a different kind of tone for quite a long time because both Kingly Street and my former gallery at Davies Street were both quite brutal spaces. I wanted to offer something else to the artists, and I've never had a townhouse gallery in London. So, it just seemed like something I hadn't done before."

"I wasn't necessarily looking to expand but when this particular space-which used to be part of Wolfgang Tillmans's studio-became available, it was something I just couldn't ignore. It has so much historical and personal significance for me and for the gallery, so this serendipity seemed almost like a magical sign and a moment that I must seize. We're very happy with the gallery as it is, but we could also use some more space for certain artists to amplify what we already have."

"These things are often planned far in advance, but I only signed the lease on this space less than two months ago so it wasn't years in the making. I needed a bigger space in the West End and this space just came up. For me, it was about making a consolidation. For the last five years we haven't had our whole team in one place; we were always really fragmented and I wanted to move everything under one roof."

Maureen Paley opened a new space at 4 Herald Street, part of Wolfgang Tillmans's former studio, to gain historically significant and additional exhibition space. The gallery will open with a show of Wolfgang's work across three spaces called Build From Here. Sadie Coles will open an entire townhouse at 17 Savile Row from 14 October to offer a different tone from previous brutal spaces and to provide artists with an alternative venue. Stuart Shave's Modern Art will occupy a double shopfront at 8 Bennet Street, St James's, from 14 November to consolidate a fragmented team, secure a larger West End presence, and reduce the number of shows.

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