Tiwani Contemporary opens new Cork Street space.
Exterior view of Tiwani Contemporary’s new space on Cork Street. Courtesy of Tiwani Contemporary.
This week, London- and Lagos-based gallery Tiwani Contemporary opened a new location, at 24 Cork Street in Mayfair. Designed by British architecture studio Matheson Whiteley, with furnishings by Lagos-based designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello, the space represents the gallery’s dual geographic focus on Nigeria and the U.K.
Tiwani Contemporary was founded by Maria Varnava in Lagos in 2011, with the mission of bringing artists from Africa and its global diaspora to the attention of a wider international audience. In 2022, the gallery opened a 2,000-square-foot space on Victoria Island in Lagos.
With the opening of its new Cork Street space, Tiwani’s previous London location in Cromwell Place will be closing. Now in the heart of Mayfair, Tiwani Contemporary is in good company, just steps from a series of prominent galleries all located on the same street, such as Stephen Friedman Gallery and Goodman Gallery.
The new space’s opening coincided with Frieze Week. The inaugural exhibition is a solo show of new paintings by Joy Labinjo, entitled “Beloved, Take What You Need.” The featured works depict everyday, joyful moments of Black British family life, in the artist’s signature, fragmentary style.
