Hanover Gallery | Ordovas
A small work by Niki de Sainte Phalle caught my eye this week. It was downstairs at Ordovas, a small gallery which tends towards starry groupings, based around a (sometimes stretchy) exhibition conceit.
This time around it’s a group of mid-to-late 20th century artists who showed at Hanover Gallery, now closed but once active in the same part of Mayfair. Erica Brausen, the owner, gave Sainte Phalle her first UK show, in 1964. The Ordovas exhibition features a Sainte Phalle work from the same year, ‘Be My Frankenstein’. Unfortunately, I can’t find a good image of it online, so here’s one of mine.
The artist’s monstrous Valentine, heart-shaped, is an assemblage of creepy toys, skulls and toys - found objects. At the time, she made her works by fixing these kinds of things onto a wooden panel, trapping them like animals with wire mesh. Then plastering or painting over the top.
I left the gallery feeling that she was wishing me a happy Hallowe’en.
Hanover Gallery is at Ordovas (London). 9 October - 11 December 2026