This week, London was officially hotter than Marrakesh, Naples, and quite possibly the inside of a functioning kiln. While the city melted in slow motion, I attempted to conduct business from what might as well have been the inside of a toasted marshmallow.
Let me say this clearly: London is not designed for heat. We can handle drizzle, gloom, and that brand of sideways wind that exfoliates your face with grit—but ask us to function in 34°C and we crumble like overcooked oatcakes.
The gallery, quickly turned into a sort of slow-roasting Scandi sauna. The air conditioning broke at 10:13am on Monday. By 10:14am, Fiona had wedged open the front door with a catalogue of post-war sculpture and was fanning herself with a consignment invoice, muttering about holidaying immediately on a Swiss glacier. She began taking client calls with a wet flannel on her head whilst drinking glasses of those peculiarly orange drinks they like in Italy.
By Tuesday, the heat had begun to affect the art. One of the mixed media pieces—composed mostly of wax —started to gently slump. I had to ring the artist, who, to their credit, took the news quite well and suggested it might now be “a commentary on the instability of the climate narrative.”
We had a visit from a client—let’s call him Giles—who arrived in linen shorts, smelling faintly of bergamot. He refused to come fully inside the gallery in case he got “overly warmed.” We stood near the threshold, politely discussing whether his new pool house in Surrey would be better suited to the large painting of a fox with anxiety or the smaller one of a duvet abandoned in a field. Giles eventually left in a sweat-slicked daze, muttering about how we should invest in some ceiling fans. I shut the door and contemplated a swim in thenSerpentine as I scraped my hair off my neck.
On Wednesday, I was meant to visit an artist’s studio in Hackney Wick, but their building had apparently reached an internal temperature of 38°C and they emailed to say they had “entered a meditative state and would remain horizontal for the foreseeable future.” Fair enough.
Thursday brought the ultimate test: an opening. We had optimistically scheduled a group show for the very week London decided to become a wok. The gallery was packed—because nothing draws the art crowd like complimentary wine and the promise of shade. Unfortunately, our wine fridge had given up the ghost sometime before noon and the rosé had become what can only be described as “lightly poached.”
A woman in a backless silk dress fainted gently next to a sculpture made entirely of mirror tiles. Someone tried to fan her with a press release. Meanwhile, an eager collector asked me if the heat was “part of the concept.” I told him, yes, it was “a participatory performance piece about the suffocating nature of capitalism.” He nodded solemnly and asked for the artist’s CV.
Now, as I sit here with a bag of frozen peas strapped to my ankles and an iced chamomile tea melting beside me, I reflect that yes—London may be a city on the verge of spontaneous combustion—but we survived. Just.
Although I’m fairly certain Fiona is now 40% Aperol.
Harissa