A fresh Canvas

Published on Tuesday 29 July 2008 22:57

Opening a new three-storey art gallery during an economic slump takes guts. Thankfully, the Inglebys have plenty, finds Tim Cornwell

A TRAIL of white paintdrops runs across the brand-new oak floor. Screws protrude from the walls. But while workmen labour against the clock to finish the new Ingleby Gallery in time for its opening tomorrow, all is not quite what it appears.

The paintdrops are not the result of clumsy decorators, but rather hundreds of rounded, polished pieces of mother of pearl, painstakingly embedded in the floor by artist Susan Collis over the space of a week, for what will be a permanent artwork. The screws are hewn from gleaming white and yellow gold, with tiny diamonds and hallmarks, while their Rawlplugs are made of coral and turquoise.

For ten years, Richard and Florence Ingleby ran their eponymous contemporary art gallery from a Georgian townhouse on Carlton Terrace in Edinburgh, combining a home for their young family with a private gallery which flourished, its turnover quickly growing to more than 1 million per year.

The Ingleby Gallery, which opened in July 1998, built a reputation for selling sought-after contemporary artists, from the Scottish painter Alison Watt to the Irish-born American Sean Scully, whose top prices can reach 200,000. While it was open to the public, prospective customers had to ring the bell.

This week the gallery moves to a permanent new home down the hill – in a three-floor building just behind Waverley Station on Calton Road – a former nightclub. It's an ambitious move that's both a major coup for the city's art scene and a highlight of this year's Edinburgh Art Festival. Turner Prize-winner Mark Wallinger is the prestigious first artist to grace the Ingleby's innovative "billboard for Edinburgh", a "hanging" space on the outside wall of the gallery.

Double doors invite art lovers and curious passers-by into two floors of open-plan gallery space, with is a library and a storeroom in the basement. "There's always been a perception of us as being rarefied, very expensive, possibly slightly intimidating," says Florence Ingleby. "One reason for the move here is that it's not at all intimidating."

At more than 6,000 sq ft (approximately ten times the size of the original venue's two rooms), the Calton Road gallery will also be able to run two shows simultaneously. While it can keep more works in the basement storeroom to show potential buyers, it will also expand its business of selling affordable prints. Postcard-size prints by the late Ian Hamilton Finlay start at less than 100, while a new series of Callum Innes prints costs more than 1,000. "This is completely open to the public," Richard Ingleby says. "We have a space where we can do more than one thing at a time, 12 months of the year."

The Inglebys closed the deal to buy the former Venue nightclub at the beginning of this year. Building work has included linking the three floors with a new staircase, which runs straight through the building with recessed banisters.

The Inglebys have had neither private nor public backing for the venture. Where the couple once ran the business themselves, it now has a staff of seven, and has grown out of its original domestic space. Since the gallery opened a decade ago, Scotland's contemporary art scene has gone from strength to strength. The Modern Institute opened at the same time in Glasgow, and doggerfisher followed in Edinburgh.

On the public side, the Fruitmarket Gallery has enjoyed a rising reputation under Fiona Bradley, while the National Galleries of Scotland reflect a growing interest in the contemporary field.

The Inglebys' opening exhibition in the upstairs gallery is by US artist Kay Rosen, who works in text – painting and drawing words in different colours and playing with meanings. It is her first exhibition in Britain since 1993.

The Inglebys admit they are taking a "step in the dark" with a new gallery at a time of economic uncertainty, but say they did the same ten years ago. But Scotland is not part of the Christie's and Sotheby's price "bubble", Richard points out. "There is an untapped resource in Edinburgh, people that would never step across that threshold would come here. We could have picked a slightly better time, but the art world is a different beast."