ART > Home is where the art is

Forget austere galleries - the new place to show art is in the living-room.

Gallery owner Simon Gillespie gets up to close his office door against the noise from below. A van delivering artworks? No: "They're shampooing the living room carpet," he explains.

Caroline Wiseman: 'I'm trying to show how good modern art looks in a period home'

For many, the experience of viewing modern art is inseparable from the blank austerity of the "white cube" gallery. But several figures on the British art scene are moving contemporary art into the domestic sphere - complete with sound-effects - by opening up their own homes as exhibition spaces.

For dealers, displaying art in a domestic context can be good for business, strengthening their relationship with artists and clients.

Gillespie, an art restorer, consultant and artist manager, converted a room in his townhouse in Islington, north London, into his gallery, Rollo Contemporary Art, in 2003. He had been inspired by two years spent in Mexico City, where he was often invited to exhibitions held in living rooms.

"Artists enjoy coming to an unusual space and showing their art in a beautiful house like this," he says. "It's better for them to have someone who really knows their art showing visitors around - I can explain what the works are about, and who the artist is."

The gallery is open to the public, but most visitors feel more comfortable arranging an appointment. These visitors are mainly youngish, comfortably-off professionals who are reaching a time in their life when they want to invest in art, as an addition to their home and as an investment.

Viewing art in what feels like an oversized living room makes it easier for them to visualise where it might hang in their home. Gillespie is often asked for advice on framing and positioning artworks. Works at Rollo sell for anything between £250 and £15,000.

Caroline Wiseman, a fellow art dealer and former barrister, has a four-storey Georgian house in Stockwell, south London, whose walls are crammed with original works by Chagall, Hockney and Bridget Riley. "I get a lot of couples in their thirties and forties, looking to buy art for the first time," she says. "They want to know where it will look good."

Wiseman's exhibitions showcase established, big-draw artists rather than new names - she is currently displaying works by British abstract painter Howard Hodgkin, and previous collections have focused on Matisse and Picasso.

"I'm trying to show how good modern art looks in a period house," she says, pointing out a Picasso drawing hanging over the stairwell. "People can feel intimidated going into a gallery. They come here, they have a drink, and they feel at home."

Many of the paintings and sculptures - chosen with first-time investors in mind - go for around £1,500, while other works are worth up to £50,000.

At the other end of the scale, those looking for a space to display innovative contemporary art by less renowned artists - whose works are often in a less take-home medium than painting - are also finding the home gallery a financial boon.

Three years ago, Darren Flook and Christabel Stewart turned the front room of their house on Old Bethnal Green Road, east London, into an exhibition space. They invited artists from outside London to stay in a spare bedroom while exhibiting, and called the gallery Hotel.

"It gave the artists a real chance to see what the London art scene is like," Flook says. "And hotels here are so expensive."

Opening a space at home was also a means of exercising control over the art they could show. "It was a decision of economy," says Stewart. "We wanted to be able to show artists without being subject to commercial considerations."

They have used that control to show a huge variety of artworks in Hotel's front room, from A Pattern Language, an installation of a mocked-up living room by American artist Carol Bove, to Vacancies by Peter Saville, featuring a neon sign flashing inside a plastic box. Neither is likely to be snapped up by young professionals looking to decorate the spare room.

Nonetheless, Hotel has turned into a successful business. The gallery saw artist Michael Bauer's pieces sell out on the first day of last year's Frieze Art Fair, while all the works by the New York-based artist Carter, who showed earlier this year, went for about £2,500 a piece before the exhibition began.

On the back of this success, last year Flook and Stewart bought the empty shop below their house and moved Hotel downstairs. Holding private views at home remains a challenge, however.

On one occasion more than 200 people were jammed into the narrow house. "It was packed out," Flook says. "One guy was setting off fireworks on the balcony."