Oscar Sunderland and Chloe Stewart Would Rather Collaborate With Their Artists Than Represent Them
The traditional gallery, with a permanent address, a fixed roster and back-to-back openings, is losing its grip, and some of the more interesting alternatives are coming from the newest “kids” on the art world block. OCD Gallery (Oscar Chloe Directory), barely a year old, is one such project. Working fluidly and in response to context while championing an exciting roster of young international artists, art historians and curators, Oscar Sunderland and Chloe Stewart, daughter of Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart, built OCD without a permanent space. Instead, the gallery travels from city to city, shaping each show around place and circumstance.
Their last exhibition was a curated group show in the historic setting of Palazzo da Mosto during the 61st Venice Biennale. For London’s Frieze Week, Stewart and Sunderland took over a 19th-century Fitzrovia building that once formed part of Pollock’s Toy Museum, turning its uneven floors, narrow staircases, accumulated layers of paint and history into an active part of the exhibition. Titled “The Bright Eyes of Children,” the show, which had a limited run on Oct. 15-17, celebrated looking at the world with curiosity before interpretation and reasoning and with the instinct to make before the need to explain.
The exhibition took its cue from an 1884 essay by Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured,” which Sunderland read at university and immediately connected with the space. “It said that children go in there to lose themselves in wonder, to build toy houses and imagine their future lives, while adults go in to seek what they used to feel: that innate innocence and creativity,” he told Observer during the installation. “Bringing together these contemporary artists, who all have incredibly playful styles that work in conjunction with each other, is about giving everyone that sense of innocence and the beauty of pure, unguarded creativity.”
On view were works by an international group of artists—Selena Corsellis, Talia Golchin, Luke Hamel Cooke, Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka, William Lowry and Atalanta Xanthe—who share an approach to the concerns of a generation raised in an increasingly unstable, often dystopian world. In this context, adaptability and creative imagination become essential tools for envisioning alternatives to the dominant techno-capitalist, production-driven model of society. Championing instead a particular sensibility and emotional attentiveness to materials and images, these artists question the underlying structures of reality, defy the dynamics of power and control and reclaim the freedom of the imaginative, creative gesture.
The old toy shop adds another symbolic and narrative layer. Once part of the neighboring pub, the space formed one half of Pollock’s Toy Museum, which operated from 1970 until the end of 2022. The shopfront still bears a painted tribute to Benjamin Pollock’s original Theatrical Print Warehouse, which for years carried on the Victorian toy theater tradition in that building: sheets of characters and scenery printed from engraved plates and sold “a penny plain and twopence coloured,” giving children the means to build and color their own miniature theaters, and adults the chance to buy back visions from their childhoods. Bringing together contemporary artists with playful, complementary approaches would, Sunderland hoped, revive that unguarded imaginative energy.
Sunderland remembers passing the shop as a student. “For years, it was where they made those toy theaters they used to have in Victorian times and puppet shows,” he explained. “It was established in the 19th Century, then closed down because no one was buying paper toys anymore,” he said, adding that the building will become a boutique hotel in a few months. Before that happens, they wanted to spotlight what the place has meant to British culture and London’s history by placing it in dialogue with contemporary artworks. “We thought this was the perfect opportunity for its last use as a creative space.”
The works were staged in an intimate dialogue with the fabric of the building, engaging with the rooms’ former uses, history and character. “What’s so interesting about the space is that you can see layers of paint on the walls from years of use. The floorboards are uneven and cracked, and the front of the shop is still as it used to be,” Sunderland pointed out. “It looks like a very traditional, Dickensian shop.” The show’s title reflects the founders’ approach to both cultural systems and the world more broadly. “For so long, there’s been this idea that we’ve been taught how to view art. I just always gain a lot of my inspiration for shows and curation from speaking to artists.”
After a year of nomadic shows, OCD plans to open permanent working spaces in both London and New York. In London, they have a warehouse near Notting Hill that Sunderland described as an office, storage area and event space rather than a conventional brick-and-mortar gallery. The building houses studios for five of the artists they work with, making their physical venue a center for production and direct encounters with artists rather than a more traditionally structured white cube. “In this way, when clients come, it isn’t just about seeing a show. We hang and curate works here, but the doors to the studios are always open, so people come in and can meet the artists directly and see what they’re working on,” he explained. Collectors are often more animated by the unexpected discovery of an artist upstairs or a work in progress than by a standard appointment.
He and Stewart often leave the warehouse doors open in the evenings, prompting visits from pub-goers: “We’ve had so much more interaction from that than we probably would have had if we had a gallery. People are intrigued by a place that looks like a warehouse, and then they see this buzz of creativity, with artists painting and people sculpting downstairs. It’s different.”
OCD’s founders also spend time working in the space, preparing for upcoming shows while sharing the environment with their artists in a way that feels both collaborative and communal. “I’m here all the time with the artists, because that’s the best way to move forward and motivate each other,” Sunderland said, describing their role as part commercial and part creative. They’re helping artists solve production problems, keep confidence in their work and present it at its best.
Fittingly, OCD was born out of an artist’s confidence in the two founders. Shortly before Sunderland and Stewart completed their master’s studies in art history at the University of Chicago, they were discussing Leopoldo Goût’s work at an exhibition in Chicago when the artist approached them and urged them to organize a show with him in London. “Two months went by, and he kept texting me, ‘You have to do it. I really believe in you guys. I think you could do it.’ And I was thinking, ‘You’ve met us twice,’” Sunderland recalled. He ended up spending that summer in Chicago, extending his lease rather than returning to the U.K. and flying repeatedly to New York to work from Goût’s studio. “Then we found a space, which is the space, and we put on the show.”
They learned to run a gallery on the job, initially with guidance from colleagues and Goût. “By the end, it was all such a blur because I was so busy. But it was an extremely successful show, so I thought, ‘Wait, I can do this for a career. This is awesome.’”
Though the project is expanding, Sunderland maintains the model will stay deliberately informal, building on the lightly marketed events they have held in London studios, friends’ homes and other borrowed settings, including an early event resembling a supper club. Their New York space, for which they are finalizing a lease, will follow the same principle. And OCD’s main exhibitions will remain nomadic, staged in sites that interact with and contextualize the art.
The goal is to build a network around their program, exhibitions and events, creating a framework that can support young artists with resources, practical tools and access to the market. “I love putting on these events and seeing young artists get that first sale, those first couple of sales, and then get going. It’s not necessarily about them being ‘our artist.’ I don’t think it has to be,” he said. “We definitely have a group of artists we work with consistently. I don’t like the word ‘represent,’ because I think it’s very constricting. Representation can be limiting for small galleries.”
Three of the artists in the London show already have representation, and OCD collaborated directly with their galleries on the project. “I think that sort of collaboration between young gallerists and dealers should be more of a thing. I love collaboration,” Sunderland reflected, adding that his generation is increasingly willing to work together rather than maintain the divisions within the field. “I love what I do, but I also go to shows and admire other gallerists and what they’re doing. What’s better than one mind? Two or three minds. It’s the best thing.”
He senses a growing appetite among younger art professionals for international exhibitions organized through relationships and pooled resources rather than solely through traditional institutional or commercial structures. They are eager to collaborate, to explore new ways of supporting art and to help artists reach wider audiences. “We’re not trying to copy what’s already there. It’s more about building longevity for artistic careers and having a base,” he concluded. “Maybe these artists will go on to Gagosian, White Cube or one of the major galleries, but we were there for them at the start, in the studio. It’s fun to see where the ship will sail. It’s exciting to imagine and create together.”
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