MEET PERMANENT LOCATION, THE NEW MICRO-GALLERIES IN BOW EMBRACING PRECARITY
As the blue-chip gallery scene in London becomes a Whac-A-Mole game, with the question of who is going to close next, it is something of a comfort to get that part out of the way. Permanent Location is one of two brand-new micro-galleries to have opened at Bow Wharf. With its current exhibition, showing painter Luke Samuel together with New Generation sculptor David Annesley, entering its final week (closing on 7th November), I return to my conversations with the gallery earlier this month.
06- Luke Samuel, Leila Majid Photography courtesy of Jemima Jenkins
When I arrive at the gallery on the last day of September to meet its gallerists, ahead of their inaugural opening taking place the following evening, it is hard to ignore the fact that the space has already been earmarked for demolition.
"[Darren] said, 'You've got to come and see them. The whole area's going to be redeveloped,'" Charlie Dunnery McCracken, who runs Permanent Location with Lincoln Dexter, tells me over the table of the café opposite, recalling her first telephone conversations with curator and East Londoner Darren Flook, whose own gallery, ROOM 10, opens next door on the same evening. The two neighbouring galleries are housed in 4 × 4-metre wooden pavilions, located along the Hertford Union Canal and a stone's throw away from the brilliant Chisenhale Gallery. Not even a day into its new lease of life under Charlie and Lincoln, I can already hear the wrecking ball swinging. But so can they.
Photography courtesy of Jemima Jenkins
"I guess that's where the name came from. We don"t know how long we're gonna be here," Charlie tells me. "It could be sooner, it could be later. But that's part of the charm." I was initially introduced to Permanent Location through Instagram, struck mid-scroll by the frankness of its announcement, containing only the skimpy details of the date, place, and name. I was curious to know more about this temporary gallery space in Bow, whose name speaks directly to London's precarity. As places shutting and spaces shrinking have become an accepted routine of working in the arts, Charlie and Lincoln are refreshingly upbeat. Despite the obvious irony, their name is spot on: London's art scene is indelible. Charlie speaks passionately about the city's endurance, where "there is so much opening and people find a way to come to openings. People want to be a part of it. It's important." Permanent Location offers us this place to gather.
Charlie and Lincoln have been friends for nearly a decade, their current collaboration being part of an "ongoing conversation for a number of years", Lincoln tells me. "We send each other shows we find interesting, any artists we like, all the time. We've always done that." These conversations became tangible in 2024, when Charlie was working at Sid Motion Gallery and the pair curated the group show of intimacy and quietude. "We"re very complementary personalities. We admire each other's strengths and really enjoy doing stuff together because, between the two of us, we more or less make one full human being."
Lincoln Dexter. Photography courtesy of Jemima Jenkins
Lincoln, who lives and works in Berlin, talks about the proliferation of people in Berlin setting up shows at home, showing work in the living rooms of Berlin apartments. In London, he loves The Approach: "I love them so much because the space is so weird. It's above a pub." The Approach Tavern pub in Bethnal Green is only a short walk away from where we are speaking, its programmes upstairs dedicated to emerging and omitted names in contemporary art. "It just seems honest and proper, and that's all I want to do." Working across commercial galleries in London and Glasgow, Charlie says that "every gallery has been a learning curve. You just pick bits from everywhere you've been, and you apply that to your own."
From left to right: Charlie, Beau, Darren. Photography courtesy of Jemima Jenkins
A theme of precarious and improvised spaces emerges as she names Celine in Glasgow as one of her most cherished spots, citing the thrill of visiting a show in the front room of a Southend tenement flat with peeling red walls: "That's what interests me." In a sick twist of fate, Celine has since announced its closure. But their parting statement rings with a salutary reminder that "while people bemoan the failure and closure of institutions, few take stock of the wealth of independent and artist-run spaces that are thriving today".
"High bills kill creative thinking, costs being the enemy of risk, and risk, that dance with possible failure, is what makes all of this exciting," says Darren Flook of ROOM 10.
Without these economic pressures that curtail the creative juices, the gallery space can become the arena for curatorial experimentation it is so often theorised to be. "It's freeing," says Charlie, allowing both the artists' work and the gallery's gallerists the chance to breathe.
Event and installation photography courtesy of Jemima Jenkins.
The affordances of the gallery's temporality allow an airiness that carries all the way through Permanent Location's inaugural exhibition. Samuel employs paint with a sculptural sensibility in Fold, using colour to trace the architectural form of a space that seems to exist somewhere between shadow and structure. It makes sense, then, to learn that his favourite artists are sculptors. Opposite, three of Annesley's small-scale maquettes sing in the light – they hover just above ground level, resting on a bespoke shelf, a nod to Annesley's toppled plinth. This is not the usual context in which one might expect to encounter an Annesley sculpture; his dynamic, open-form metal works have occupied the polished interiors of Waddington Custot and the New Art Centre, as well as spaces at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Installation photography courtesy of Jemima Jenkins
"They feel quite domestic as these are the ones he works on in his house before he goes into the bigger studio," Charlie says. "He has actually edited one of the maquettes for the show, which I think is so lovely." Annesley works in his kitchen-turned-studio, where his worktop is punctuated by pots and pans and a whirring kettle; at The Newman Hotel during Frieze week, you could watch Annesley talk candidly about his process, interviewed from his kitchen by Cameron Nicoll in his tender documentary The Half Truths of David Annesley (2019), exhibited by Charlie's Particular Ideas.
Separated by sixty years, their practices have emerged from distinct moments in art, yet within this intimate space, that distance becomes less a gap than a point of connection – a reminder that we are all at the whim of a shifting art scene. "It's not always about introducing a younger artist to a more established artist," Charlie tells me. "It was also introducing David to Luke's work. I think it's important to keep the dialogues going." Like all good conversations, the space leaves room for such idiosyncrasies and tangents, which will evolve as people continue to talk. Next month, the chatter continues as Deborah Lerner's solo exhibition puts its own stamp on the gallery's walls, opening on 20th November at this gem in Bow Wharf.
In London, permanence is becoming less about staying put than finding alternative ways to continue. For Permanent Location, that means working with artists and working with what we've got.
Permanent Location's current exhibition is on show from 2nd October until 7th November 2026. Next door at ROOM 10, Simon Bedwell's solo exhibition runs concurrently until 7th November.
