Art world discovers Somerset village, reshaping UK's London-centric creative map

A decade ago, Bruton was a town of 3,000 people with a pub, a convenience store, and not much else. Today, you can eat a tasting menu in a Michelin-starred restaurant, wander through a major contemporary gallery housed in a converted farm, and browse work by artists shown at international art fairs—all within a historic market town an hour and 45 minutes from London.

The shift began in 2014 when Manuela and Iwan Wirth, founders of the powerhouse Hauser & Wirth gallery, opened a Somerset outpost on the edge of Bruton. What might have looked like an unlikely gamble—planting high-end contemporary art in the West Country—has fundamentally reshaped how the UK thinks about where serious culture happens.

Beyond the London Bubble

Hauser & Wirth Somerset isn't just a gallery. It's become a whole ecosystem: converted barns showing work by artists like Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, a restaurant (Da Costa) and another fine-dining spot called Osip three miles away in a pine forest, a farm shop, a bar, and a 1.5-acre perennial meadow designed by landscape architect Piet Oudolf. The gallery runs artist residencies, education programs, and public events.

But the real story is what followed. Other galleries emerged: Make, dedicated to contemporary craft and owned by Hauser & Wirth; Bo Lee Gallery, opened in 2022 in a former Methodist church, which debuted at the Armory Show this year showing work by Somerset-based artist Alice Kettle. Jemma Hickman, who runs Bo Lee after years in a London gallery in Peckham, noticed something unexpected: collectors from around the world now travel to Somerset, whereas in London they wouldn't cross neighborhoods.

"The quiet, the light, and the sense of pause invite lingering in a way that London galleries, with their constant motion, don't always allow," Hickman told me.

The contemporary art scene extends well beyond Bruton. Close Gallery in the village of Hatch Beauchamp, founded in 2019, has grown confident enough to organize exhibitions in partnership with London galleries—its current show "After Nature," curated by a former Tate Britain curator, runs in Bethnal Green until February 14. Bristol, which borders Somerset, hosts institutions like Spike Island and Arnolfini, where artists like Sahara Longe (who studied and dropped out of Bristol University) are building significant practices.

Freeny Yianni, who founded Close Gallery, describes the work as rooted in "attunement to place, to materials, and to our shifting relationship with the natural world." That philosophy seems to have taken hold across the region—artists and institutions are choosing to stay, or choosing to come, because the infrastructure and community now support serious contemporary practice outside London's orbit.

Somerset's transformation mirrors what happened in Margate, where artist Tracey Emin's initiatives helped reshape a coastal town's cultural identity. It's a reminder that the UK's creative energy doesn't flow only through the capital. When institutions take the risk of looking elsewhere, entire ecosystems can follow.