Starting from March 2019, the gallery’s year-long programme 100% Women, which addressed the gender imbalance that continues even today in the art world, was multi-faceted, delivered across gallery exhibitions, art fairs, digital presentations, public talks, discussions and events.  

Continuing its thematic approach to exhibitions, Richard Saltoun Gallery is currently running On Hannah Arendt: Eight Proposals for Exhibition that focuses on one of the greatest thinkers from the post-war generation, Hannah Arendt, and the 1968 final edition of her work Between Past and Future. Featuring twenty international artists who present, interpret, infer, and offer solutions to Arendt’s ideas in the book, the eight exhibitions tackle “questions” posed by each essay in the publication — “Tradition and the Modern Age”, “The Concept of History”, “What Is Authority?”, “What Is Freedom?”, “The Crisis in Education”, “The Crisis in Culture”, “Truth and Politics”, and “The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man.” The exhibitions will run until in sequence until 31 December of this year. Incidentally, it’s extremely rare for a commercial gallery to undertake a single theme such as 100% Women or On Hannah Arendt for an extended period of time such as one year, and it’s extremely rare for a gallery to cooperate with unaffiliated artists.

Here, is what heard from the representative of Richard Saltoun Gallery, Richard Saulton himself.

Since its opening, Richard Saltoun Gallery has been committed to supporting under-represented artists, but was there any concern or distrust in the current art world behind the establishment the stance of such a gallery?

What do you think are the main reasons why important yet under-recognised artists have been overlooked?

For On Hannah Arendt, please tell us the specifics about the program so that we can experience/participate online, even if we cannot actually visit the gallery.

What do you think can only be achieved by taking a single theme over the long period of one year, such as 100% Women and On Hannah Arendt?

In this program, Laima Leyton composed sound pieces for each chapter. What are your thoughts on the potential that music brings to art programmes?

In the last few years, public interest and awareness of all social issues has increased worldwide, and I feel that this tendency has become even stronger due to the pandemic. If there is anything that art and those involved in art can do in such a situation, what do you think it is?

In the interviews for the first issue of this magazine, the artist Emma Kohlmann spoke:  “I think there are ways to combine creativity and art-making as a way that informs action”; and curator Francesca Gavin also pointed out that “if something doesn’t have an altruistic vein to it, it feels strange.” I keenly feel through recent interviews, including this one, that individuals involved with art are by nature heading towards a direction that isn’t merely the “pursuit of beauty” about the overall consciousness of the art world.

So, as it was mentioned in the interview with Saltoun, the sound artist Laima Leyton, who was interviewed in our first issue, is also a participant in On Hannah Arendt. For our next article, we would like to introduce the sound work Leyton has provided to this project along with a short interview with her.