The lively family home in Clapham that doubles as a private gallery space (2025)

Words Victoria Woodcock
Photography Elliot Sheppard

In the Brixton house owned by Tanya Grigoroglou and Rupert Worrall, work and life collide in uniquely chic and creative style. The onetime shop that has been redesigned with north-London-basedO’Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects is both a home to the couple and their three young children, and a gallery space for RAW Editions – the business they run together, selling prints by postwar and contemporary artists.

The two met when working at Bloomsbury auction house in 2010. “A few months later we both moved to Bonhams and spent many years heading the prints department together there,” recalls Tanya. “Then we worked against each other for a little bit at competing auction houses. Our whole life was at auctions.”

When Tanya decided to strike out on her own eight years ago, she started showing pieces to clients in their previous flat. “It felt good, but it didn’t feel quite right,” she explains. Buying and gut-renovating a new house gave them an opportunity to create their ideal scenario. “We always had this vision of a space for entertainingwhere you can really see how people live with art – or at least how we live with art,” says Tanya.

The process wasn’t without its challenges, however. After moving into the house with their daughter Isla, Rupert left his auction-house job to join RAW. “We had given the go ahead to the architects and signed with the contractor, then I found out I was having twins,” laughs Tanya. “Rupert was like, ‘We should sell the house, find somewhere else.’ But we stuck with it.”

Today, the space strikes a happy balance; while it’s characterful and at times colourful, it allows the art on show to shine. This might be an energetic Tracey Emin lithograph (‘Just Waiting’, 2022) or a large and detailed pigment print by Grayson Perry (‘England as Seen from Lockdown in Islington’, 2021) – both in the living room. In the basement kitchen, a pair of ultra-bright Michael Craig-Martin screenprints (‘Deconstructing Seurat (turquoise green)’, 2004) are propped appealingly upon a low sideboard. Onthe first-floor landing, meanwhile, multiple mini artworks line custom wall-hung shelves, which, created by London-based Japanese duo Mentsen, double as display units for events. Next up is the London Original Print Fair at Somerset House (20th-23rd March), where RAW Editions will present new woodcut prints by London-based artist Tom Hammick.

Tanya: “We bought the house in 2019. It was a long process because the owners had tenants that needed to vacate the property – and by the time we moved in I was pregnant with Isla, our eldest. Funnily enough, Isla was born on the Monday of the first lockdown.”

Rupert: ”We had started to talk to our architects, but Covid slowed everything down. I guess it gave us more time to live in the house and really think about how we use the space.”

Tanya: “Exploring how it really didn’t work! The lower ground floor was two bedrooms and a bathroom, and we never used it, ever.”

Rupert: “It was dark, it had mould and rising damp. We didn’t really want to have art down there.”

Tanya: “It was a great transition period of discovering what we didn’t like so we could make it right. We were very conscious of trying to use every square centimetre of the house, as well as creating surfaces to display art on: benches and nooks and ledges. When I first started working from home and inviting people in to see things for sale, I struggled a bit with the idea of what is private and what isn’t. So at the beginning of planning the refurbishment, I was trying to keep those two things separate: the gallery down in the basement, life upstairs.”

Rupert: “The architects said wecoulddo that –walk straight down into a gallery space –but we worked together with them to realise that we didn’t actually want that.”

Tanya: “It was a very transformative journey working with Amalia and Jody [of O’Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects]. They are a Greek-Irish couple and we found a lot of similarities in how they work together; they really grasped the concept of a hybrid work-live space. We’re now good friends, but what attracted us to them in the first place was definitely their amazing sense of materiality. We’ve got Douglas Fir joinery in the lower floor, a long storage box sitting on legs that we rest art on, as well as a triangular seat directly below a skylight; the kitchen is made from plywood stained with linseed oil; and all the door handles are unpolished brass. They definitely took me out of my comfort zone in thinking about the use of space. And I think we maybe took them out of their comfort zone with the use of colour.

“I love bold colours – like the green light in the kitchen, which is Muller Van Severen; the blue dining table, which is their design for Hay; and the bespoke terrazzo fireplace in the living room by Granby Workshop, a social enterprise in Liverpool set up by thearchitecture, design and artcollectiveAssemble. We ordered the slab sizes to Amalia and Jody’s design and assembled them in situ.”

Rupert: “We use it for propping artworks on. The same with the sideboard in the kitchen. The Michael Craig-Martin prints there now are for sale; we had them above a bed in one of our flats many years ago.”

Tanya: “We do tend to change things around. The living room – the main space where we see clients – is the room where the art collection changes the most. There’s a Bridget Riley, two Ed Ruscha works and a tiny Rachel Whiteread edition of a light switch, which most people don’t notice, but it’s such a witty piece.

“Some things are a bit more permanent. We started our personal collection with tiny-sized pieces: prints, postcards, works on paper. We couldn’t afford a Michael Craig-Martin canvas, but we could afford a tiny little collage. We tried to get work by our heroes like John Baldessari, Gilbert & George, Tracey Emin and Peter Blake. For our one-year wedding anniversary we bought each other a Paula Rego triptych; it’s in our bedroom now – and it’s not going anywhere.”

Rupert: “It’s hard as a dealer though; an offer comes along and you are tempted. The Howard Hodgkin that we have in the living room was always something that was for sale, but when we got it framed and hung it above the couch, it was like, ‘I don’t think we can sell this now. It looks too good.’”

Tanya: “Very early on as a dealer I sold the first David Shrigley I had bought. I had queued to buy it and I really loved it, but then someone made me an offer … I have thought about that print ever since. So I decided that there are some things you shouldn’t part with.

“The artwork becomes more personal the higher up in the house you go, because that’s where the bedrooms are. The top floor was an extension to the house and it’s been completely taken over by our kids. They’ve got their own bathroom and a little play area. They choose their own art most of the time! In Isla’s room there’s a print by [American artist] Katherine Bernhardt; it’s bright and light-hearted. She said: ‘I really want the one with the bananas and the bird!’”