What are the opening hours?

Tuesday 10am - 6pm Wednesday 10am - 6pm Thursday 10am - 6pm Friday 10am - 6pm Saturday 10am - 6pm

Messums London

Home
United Kingdom
London
Messums London

Messums London is the West End outpost of Messums West founded in 2016 by Johnny Messum. Messum's is a member of BADA and SLAD.

Messums London is the West End outpost of the Messums Wiltshire brand founded in 2016 by Johnny Messum. It celebrates the best of artists, conceptual craft and the skill of the hand when applied to creativity across the ages. Regular exhibitions across the year complete and compliment the programme of events that our 13th Century Tithe Barn near Salisbury. We also engage actively with museums and

public institutions - including Tate Britain, Tate St Ives, the National Maritime Museum, Birmingham Art Museum and Penlee House and Galleries - to promote British art. Equally, Messum's advise private clients on collection management, research, conservation, framing and valuation.

04/09/2026

Saturday 5 September is the final day to view 'Totemic' at Messums London.

Across half a century and a range of disciplines, these are artists who have aimed, and still do, ground the audience in a form of meditation. That is the case Totemic makes: that attentiveness to form, to material, to time itself is one of the truest ways of making and seeing.

Totemic features work by Motunrayo Akinola, Sonia Elizabeth Barrett, Christie Brown, Hugo Colville, Matthew Darbyshire, Laurence Edwards, Edie Flowers, Michael Flynn, Jonathan Fremantle, Elisabeth Frink, Nicola Hicks, Lubaina Himid, Dante Marioni, Paul de Monchaux, Charles Poulsen, Antony Williams and Ann Thomson.

31/08/2026

“God, turn me into a flower.”
Weyes Blood, 2022. Natalie Mering wrote it about Narcissus —“he didn’t recognise himself. He was obsessed with the reflection, but he didn’t realise it was just him.”
Eleven years before he painted this work, Nolan made a self-portrait and called it Narcissus S.N. It hangs in Adelaide.

This self portrait has not been seen since 1958, the year it was painted. It is also the only known self portrait of the artist between the years 1948 and 1972. It goes on view at Sydney contemporary this Wednesday and here are our insights: in 1953, the year that the forthcoming exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales “Sidney Nolan, Origins” uses as its finish point- Nolan moved to London. 1958 catches him at the hinge of his international ascent. The Whitechapel retrospective curated by Bryan Robertson ran June through July 1957 with essay by Colin Mcinnes “Sidney Nolan, the search for an Australian myth” That same year Nolan was studying printmaking in Paris at Atelier 17 under SW Hayter. The Mrs Fraser series (57-64) was underway. Then in 1958 exactly a year after the Whitechapel show he arrived in New York with Cynthia and Jinx to take up residence on the two year Harkness scholarship. So this portait is mostly likely painted in the first half of 1958. That sense of crystallising moments of change is supported by Andrew Sayer’s observation that Nolan’s self portraits seem to occur at pivot points of artistic discovery and this work fills a conspicuous gap in those moments between 1947 and the works of the 80’s. It feels perhaps that “still life with flower” draws on European portraiture precedents. He cannot have failed to see Rembrandt’s self portrait at Kenwood house or Nicolas Poussin’s portrait at the Louvre the previous year to which this has a striking resemblance. There is something bravura in this painting. A coming out of the shadows in confident and expressive marks rubbed back and quick touches to the surface. Then there is the flower! How to explain that!? It seems a deliberate irreverent. As if to say “ don’t take me at face value, am this portait sits within European values but I am not entirely part of them” what are your thoughts?

28/08/2026

Totemic at Messums London, as featured in The Weekender

Only one week left to visit the exhibition. Totemic continues until Saturday 5 September.

The solo exhibition by Jack McGarrity opens 9th September. All artwork enquiries by email to london@messums.orgMcGarrity...

24/08/2026

The solo exhibition by Jack McGarrity opens 9th September. All artwork enquiries by email to [email protected]

McGarrity paints at the hour of threshold: sunset, dusk, the moment before dark. His canvases catch light at its most unfixed. A sky that might equally read as coral, violet, or simply bright. Fires bloom on shorelines; distant towns glow like embers in a blue field; a figure stoops in a meadow, lit from below by something he is holding or tending. Even his domestic interiors, a sash window at night, a radiator, the dim red of a parked car glimpsed through a back wall, partake of that same ethereal quality, opening like a window onto a scene that feels fleeting, and yet, briefly, wholly within grasp.

McGarrity studied Painting and Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art, near where he was raised in the west of Scotland, before relocating to London to continue his studies at the Royal Drawing School. In 2018 the Richard Ford Award took him to the Museo del Prado where he developed a sustained admiration of Goya — a compositional weight that still moves through the larger paintings. The following year, three months in Florence on the John Kinross Award deepened his engagement with painting’s older traditions. He joined the Messums Emerging Talents Programme with a solo exhibition at our Wiltshire gallery in 2021.

19/08/2026

Back in 2022, artist Jack McGarrity was photographed here preparing for his exhibition at Messums London, featuring a body of work exploring interior spaces and the experience of life within four walls during lockdown.

For his latest solo presentation at our Cork Street gallery, Jack has turned his gaze outward. His new paintings explore the natural world beyond the confines of the interior, capturing fleeting light, shifting skies and the atmosphere of the landscape through his trademark use of colour.

From interiors to the great outdoors, Jack’s work continues to find beauty in those quiet, transitional moments where light and colour transform what we see.

Jack McGarrity's new exhibition opens at Messums London, 28 Cork Street on Wednesday 9th September. Email enquiries to [email protected]

18/08/2026

Join us this week for a conversation with Jonathan Freemantle on the totemic possibilities of sculpture.

These works are the latest manifestations of a body of work that emerged from his immersion in a 7-month residency with the Hugo Burge Foundation in Scotland.

Join us this Wednesday 19 August, from 6pm at Messums London, 28 Cork Street.
Talk and discussion 6:15- 6:45pm

TOTEMIC Exhibition continues
1 July - 5 September 2026

14/08/2026

At this years Sydney Contemporary art fair we will be showing works created by Tyga Helme on residency at the Corridor Project New South Wales in 2023. Tyga undertook the development of a new body of work that emerged from site-responsive observation.

“The Corridor Project gave me such an incredible sense of peace and calm from which to work from. The boundaries became porous between my living and working world and as a result I felt closer to my practice than I have for a long time. Being embedded in the landscape with a structureless day gave me space and time to connect to the new and unfamiliar landscape around me and allowed me to draw from it, without agenda or expectation.” - Tyga Helme

13/08/2026

Fascinating talk yesterday evening with artist Edie Flowers about her work 'A Private Conversation', now on view as part of our Totemic exhibition.

Next up, a conversation with Jonathan Freemantle on Wednesday 19th August at 6pm. Do come along and join us if you are in town.

10/08/2026

The Laurence Edwards artworks have set off on their journey to Australia for the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair this September.

Exhibiting at the Fair for the first time, Messums joins together the creative impetus of Australia and the United Kingdom with a presentation celebrating the historic cross-hemispheric exchange between the UK and Australia.

Sydney Contemporary 2026 marks the world premiere of 'Walk Away', a major new monumental bronze figure by Laurence Edwards. 'Walk Away represents' Edwards’ first monumental single figure since he cast the celebrated Walking Men I–V (2018–22) at his Suffolk foundry. Those five striding figures captured public attention in Australia during their landmark tour to Orange Regional Gallery in early 2023, before being installed on the terrace of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney.

07/08/2026

Antony Williams’ work is based on intense observation, particularly of human flesh, creating as a result, a heightened sense of realism. He works almost exclusively in tempera – a painstaking, exacting medium in which egg is used instead of linseed oil as the binding medium. While oil allows for a degree of flexibility and manipulation of the painted surface before it dries, this technique does not easily allow for alteration.

Williams' work has been recognised with numerous awards, including first prize in the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2024 at the National Portrait Gallery in July 2024. Williams’s work is held in notable public collections including the National Portrait Gallery; Royal Collection; House of Commons; MCC Lords; Garrick Club; Corpus Christi, Oxford; Trinity Hall, Cambridge; Queens College, Oxford and a number of significant private collections.

Antony Williams' paintings can be seen at Messums London on Cork Street, as part of our Totemic exhibition until 5th September.

Artwork enquiries by email to [email protected]

Address

London

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10am - 6pm
Wednesday	10am - 6pm
Thursday	10am - 6pm
Friday	10am - 6pm
Saturday	10am - 6pm

Telephone

+442074375545

Website

http://www.messums.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Messums London posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to Messums London:

Want your museum to be the top-listed Museum in London?