Andipa Gallery

Was here for the Banksy /​War Boutique opening, really cute gallery tucked away in South Ken. Perfect place for small to medium sized collections and a great place to make sales, I would imagine. While the gallery is not terribly massive, it has gone the way of Saatchi with the unfinished wood flooring and glass accents which give a good modern feel that doesn’t distract from the exhibits.
You can buy a Banksy canvas series painting for a cool £38,000. You’ve got that on your card, right?

Went down to see the Slinkachu ‘Concrete Ocean’ exhibition which was fantastic– really interesting to see the installations up close
great works, including my favourite ‘Fantastic Voyage’ in a huge format on aluminium. lovely gallery space, definitely one to seek out!

Not sure I agree with Phil … Banksy is being screwed. Not only is his work not properly represented by Andipa but if these items so-​called ripped form the street are being sold at mega prices he is losing out!
As I understand it, unless you are buying in the secondary market Lazarides is the only lace to go for a primary market Banksy. Unless of course you want to rip it off a wall in the street.
I remember Andipa when they were selling Orthodox icons, but needless to say, however gold plated, they don’t have the same, glitz, cache or anything else than Banksy and other street artists, who seem to be taking the populist art market by storm.
You can’t fault Andipa for their commercial acumen, but in reality the best value street art is to be found in East London, where it belongs, and where the best deals for buyers and for artists are to be found.

Last time here, I met small scale street artist Slinkachu (
) while he was prepping for his «What Ever Happened to the Men of Tomorrow» exhibition. I’ve been by to check out impressive exhibitions of works by Banksy too. There’s always something worth a look see at Andipa, usually worth making an effort to trek across town for.
Andipa is a tiny but elegant space on the lovely Walton Street. The folks running the show here do a fab job showing interesting art.

The Andipa has probably had more customers through its doors in the last few days than for some time, as their two galleries on Walton Street are currently the home of the artist-​du-​jour, Banksy.
I didn’t know exactly what the format was, but went down to check it out. It turns out that they’re basically selling a whole lot of work that has been «recovered» by private collectors from the streets. For a lot of money. A sign states, something along the lines of — «This exhibition has not been approved by the artist»! No kidding — you’d expect to find him graffiting some industrial landscape down in the east-​end — not the mews of Knightsbridge.
The whole thing left me feeling slightly queazy, except for the fact that I was really impressed by the political messages and humour in his work. One of the pieces was entitled — «I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit».
Banksy’s having the last laugh.