A new contemporary gallery opens in Nine Elms with a debut exhibition of sculpture
Mulryan Gallery arrives at Embassy Gardens, with a working artist in residence, a director of international standing, and serious ambitions for contemporary art.
[London, 25 June 2026] - The Mulryan Gallery has opened at Embassy Gardens, Nine Elms, establishing a permanent contemporary art gallery and a serious new addition to London’s gallery landscape.
The gallery is named after Sean Mulryan, Founder and Chairman of Ballymore Group, one of the UK’s most successful property developers and a committed private art collector, whose previous contributions to London's arts scene include the Mulryan Centre for Dance at London City Island, home to the English National Ballet.
Mulryan says: “I began my working life as a bricklayer and stonemason, and it wasn’t long before I developed a deep appreciation of the power of craftsmanship and the creative process. The Mulryan Gallery is a continuation of that idea - a vibrant and enduring space where artists can create, audiences can engage, and contemporary art can thrive.”
The inaugural exhibition brings together four sculptors - Vincenzo Muratore, Patrick O’Reilly, Anna Gillespie and Gabriele Risso - whose individual practices, though distinct, are connected by exploration on the themes of transformation, memory and the human body.
Each artist is unified by what sculpture holds and conveys, including the accumulated time within stone, the psychological charge of the figure, the tension between permanence and fragility, and the possibilities of repair.
Anastasia Anastasiadou has been appointed as Gallery Director, signalling the gallery’s ambition to establish itself as a serious contemporary platform from the outset. She brings experience across both the commercial and curatorial spheres of the international art world, having held positions at Michael Goedhuis and 3812 Gallery. Her work has focused on artists, collectors and material histories across cultures, alongside experience supporting artist residencies and building collector relationships, with particular expertise in contemporary Asian art, ink painting and historic Chinese and Japanese bronzes.
She comments: “Joining Mulryan Gallery at this formative moment feels like a rare opportunity to shape something that is intellectually alive, artist-led and genuinely distinctive within London’s cultural landscape. My goal is to create a programme that is thoughtful, materially rich and internationally resonant, establishing Mulryan Gallery as a place for unexpected encounters, sustained dialogue and ambitious artistic thinking across disciplines and mediums.”
Vincenzo Muratore has been appointed Lead Artist and inaugural Artist in Residence at the Mulryan Gallery, where his active research and production studio is integrated and can be visited as part of the public exhibition space. His practice redefines the boundaries between traditional heritage crafts and advanced digital fabrication, exploring the tension between concealment and revelation through a material language spanning marble, bronze, and volatile organic matter. His work fuses ancient stonecraft with 3D modelling, robotic milling, and experimental cyanotype processes applied directly to stone, challenging conventional perceptions of structural permanence.
He comments: "To step into the role of Lead Artist and inaugural resident at the Mulryan Gallery is a profound opportunity to dismantle the boundary between the private space of the studio and the public encounter. My current work at Embassy Gardens addresses layers: the geological and technological strata that accumulate and endure. By embedding my working studio directly within the gallery environment, I invite visitors to experience sculpture not as a static, commodified artifact, but as an active, living process.”
The Mulryan Gallery is located at 47 Nine Elms Lane, Embassy Gardens, London. The gallery launches on Thursday 25th June and will be open from Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10:00AM to 6:00PM, and on Mondays by appointment only.
