It’s Frieze week in London, and one of the unlikeliest of art exhibitions—put on by Tramps gallery—is down a grimy Victorian side street in Kings Cross, above a shuttered pub. The pub, McGlynn’s, was, until its closure in 2023, renowned for its ungentrified ways—sticky red carpet, worn tables, TV blaring, a collection of shovels on the wall.
The fact that it is now hosting an art show is due to its recently being bought by the painter Peter Doig. Unlike many developers, Doig doesn’t want to tear the place down, or even renovate it all that much. “I think when you first walk in, you’re going to feel like you’re in the same place,” he told The Art Newspaper. It was yet another sign of the rebirth of a type of pub that, in local parlance, is known as a boozer.
