LONDON—Motivated by economic difficulties, artists and gallerists have begun working with landowners on a variety of unusual real estate arrangements in many cities. The New York Times reports today that temporary galleries are now proliferating in unused commercial spaces across London, the latest location to be swept up in the “pop-up” phenomenon, as the practice has been termed.

The practice appears to be occurring at all levels of the art industry. Simon Tarrant, a London-based painter not represented by a gallery, approached a landlord about an empty commercial space in the fashionable Chelsea district in June and was able to secure a six-month lease in exchange for paying utilities and 15 percent of any sales to the owner. Meanwhile, Charlie Philips, the founding director of Haunch of Venison who now runs the contemporary art gallery Eleven, has worked with the Grosvenor property group to hold shows in abandoned clothing shops.

In New York, pop-up galleries have also become a popular method of showcasing work, and organizations have developed to help facilitate the process. No Longer Empty, for example, has shown work by Yoko Ono, Cao Fei, and others in unleased commercial space at the Caledonia, an apartment building in Chelsea. Smartspaces, another New York–based group, has used storefront windows throughout the city to show video art, while projects with names like MWNM and Exhibition 211 have "popped up" for a few weeks to a few months in unused spaces and then vanished just as quickly.

Read more at the New York Times.