TWO MORE LONDON GALLERIES TO CLOSE

Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn reports that Albion Gallery, a high-tech space designed by Norman Foster on the banks of the river Thames, will close in June, after shutting its site on Upper East Side of Manhattan, according to the gallery’s director, Michael Hue-Williams. “We’re retrenching right back to a smaller operation in London,” Hue-Williams said in a telephone interview. “This kind of gallery isn’t sustainable in the current environment. It’s a very tough climate. No one has experienced this before. Everyone is under enormous pressure.”

An unrelated gallery, the Approach, also announced yesterday that it will shut the doors of its Fitzrovia district site in London next month. The dealership will maintain its space in the east of the city. The Approach will continue to exhibit at the Art Basel and Frieze art fairs, and this October will be showing for the first time at the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC) in Paris, director Emma Robertson said yesterday. “We took out a short lease in the West End. We found it was a bit too much to do two programs,” Robertson said in a telephone interview. “It makes more sense to consolidate.”

The news comes after the closure of several other London galleries. Fitzrovia dealer Alexandre Pollazzon’s gallery closed in December. Yvon Lambert, who runs galleries in Paris and New York, pulled out of Hoxton Square in March after just six months. Allsopp Contemporary, based in the Notting Hill district, confirmed last month that it was giving up its exhibition space.