A tribute to the curator and gallerist Anya Stonelake (1973-2022 ). Anya belonged to the generation that emerged during perestroika, when the Russian art scene was changing completely. Her White Space Gallery in London was the first stop for anyone interested in post-Soviet art. She worked on performance art, site-specific projects, Russian video art and post-Soviet photography. Thanks to her tireless efforts, works by Russian artists can now be found in many of London’s museums.

Anya Stonelake was born in St Petersburg, then Leningrad, in 1973. In 1999, she graduated from the Vera Mukina art school in St Petersburg and moved to London with her husband, Michael Stonelake.  A year later they organised the first exhibition of artists from Russia and Eastern Europe, which was the beginning of the White Space Gallery. During the 2000s she introduced for the first time in the UK works by Timur Novikov and the New Artists Group, the feminist Factory of Found Clothes, Olga Chernysheva, Gosha Ostretsov, Tatyana Antoshina, Andrey Tarkovsky, Lithuanian photographers and many others.

Anya’s friends and colleagues will talk about the art she showed in this country, her many projects and the context within which she was operating. The contributors include Sarah Wilson, a Professor of Art History of Courtauld Institute, filmmaker Henrietta Foster, BBC journalist and author Alex Kan, curator and psychotherapist Nana Zhvitiashvili, curator Elena Zaytseva and artist Michael Stonelake. 

As part of the evening, the pianist and composer Pavel Timofeyevsky will give a concert including the Sonata in A major by Schubert, short pieces by Chopin, Rachmaninov and Liszt, and two surprises that were particularly loved by Anya.