Dean Street Townhouse

Artist Jonathan Yeo and myself have co-curated the permanent collection of artworks at the Dean Street Townhouse, which opens to the public on Wednesday November 25.

The collection plays with the history and atmosphere of Soho and London, highlighting the breadth and brilliance of contemporary British art. The building has an amazing history. It was the location of The Gargoyle Club, a notorious hang out before and after WWII. Its red and glass interior was partly created by Henri Matisse, whose painting ‘The Red Studio’ hung on its walls. RNoel Coward, Sigfried Sassoon, Dylan Thomas, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, John Minton and Graham Greene all hung out there. In the 1970s a theatre was installed and it later became a sauna and massage parlour for men, before turning into the 1980s nightclub Gossips. Expect a lot of artist's to hang out there for the year.

The ground floor is filled with awesome selection of artists - to be honest I'm a bit blown away. Its like a greatest hits of contemporary British art! There's the old school (Andrzej Klimowski, Peter Blake), an acre of YBAs (Tracey Emin, Noble and Webster, Gavin Turk, Fiona Banner, Paul Noble, even a humorous Hirst), lots of outsiders (Jamie Hewlett, Jose Parla), the Turner Prize crowd (Keith Tyson, Mark Titchner) and tons of really great younger names (Jamie Shovlin, Tom Ormond, Sam Griffin pictured above etc).

Dean Street Townhouse, 69 Dean Street, London W1