Stephen Friedman Gallery’s £7.8m Debt Encompasses Artists and Suppliers

As Anny Shaw has reported for The Art Newspaper, London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery, which closed its doors in February this year, owes nearly £800,000 to artists and suppliers.

Accounts on Companies House for the year ending 2024 reveal outstanding debts of £7.8m owed to creditors, with a significant amount owed to the gallery’s artists, including Alexandre Diop, Deborah Roberts and Kehinde Wiley. Friedman, who owns 100% of the gallery’s share capital, owes Diop £341,905, Roberts £289,232 and Wiley £163,849. 

Delayed payments are not uncommon within the operating models of galleries, but the scale of debt raises questions about cashflow and the existing business structures of the commercial artworld.

Stephen Friedman was founded in 1995 and was long regarded as one of London’s influential contemporary spaces, representing a roster of established international names. While inflationary pressures, coupled with increased overheads – from shipping to staffing – have affected margins across the sector, the filings reveal that the gallery’s turnover altered significantly in a short period of time throughout 2023. During this year, Friedman moved to a larger premises on Cork Street in London, and opened a new space in New York. 

While the highest debt is owed to Coutts & Company bank (£3.1m), Pentland Group – a UK-based company whose director, Alison Mosheim, owns 50% of the gallery itself – is owed £1.4m. Other creditors owed include: HMRC, the tax authority of the UK (£550,000), art fairs such as Frieze (£71,227) and the Qatar branch of Art Basel (£18,763) as well as logistics companies like Crozier (£256,470) and Gander & White (£86,772). Former staff should receive the full amount of money which they are owed – for unpaid work, holiday pay and the like – totalling £39,000.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the artists owed by the gallery. As unsecured creditors, meaning that they are not backed by collateral over their debtor's assets, they will likely receive only eight to nine pence for every pound owed.