Of course, with the currently booming contemporary market, some galleries can afford the best of both worlds—a smaller space in the commercially viable West, and a larger, more curatorially minded gallery in the east. White Cube, for instance, has returned to its West End roots, where it started in 1993 before moving east in 2000, opening a new space last September that will mount more commercially viable exhibitions while its East End base, at Hoxton Square, continues to showcase some of its younger artists. Jake Miller at the Approach is taking a similar tack. His Fitzrovia gallery opened with one of his biggest names, Stezaker, and the current group show there includes such salable artists as Raedecker and  Francis Picabia. Meanwhile, across town Miller is showing Dutch artist Germaine Kruip, whose work is more conceptual and site-specific, in the gallery’s original space, located above a pub favored by the young art crowd. “Having two spaces gives us flexibility to put on artists we’ve worked with for a long time in the West End and bring in newer, younger artists, whose work perhaps does not sell for quite so much, in the East End,” Miller says.  

Does the exodus out of the East End mean the end of an area that, by providing cheap real estate and ample display space, revolutionized British art both commercially and creatively? Shave is vehement that it does not. “Being in the East End has been the secret of the gallery’s success,” he says. “It’s a really important area for art internationally, and it’s still got amazing energy.” Indeed, it is unlikely Shave’s old property will remain empty for long. Young dealers with unknown artists pop up regularly along Vyner Street, and Wilkinson, one of the most important galleries in the market, remains so confident of the area’s ongoing appeal that it opened a 6,000-square-foot museum-size space there in September.

Fitzrovia is an addition to the London scene, not a replacement, and those involved hope it will be perceived as a place that combines the commercial nous of the West End with the curatorial passion of the East. Says Pollozzan: “Fitzrovia, it’s probably the East End of the West End.”