Putting art on the map

Surrounded by very new art in a very old building, Lotte Inch looks back to life a couple of years ago. “I had a steady job, a good salary, a pension, and the potential of maternity pay,” she says. “Now I don’t have any of that. I gave it all up.”

We’re sitting in the bright, smart, stylish gallery she set up in York after leaving the steady job and the good salary. Called, with unimpeachable logic, the Lotte Inch Gallery, it’s on Bootham, just round the corner from York’s newly-refurbished Art Gallery (also bright, smart and stylish).

She tells me about her latest exhibition – a collaboration with the Michelin-starred chef and TV presenter Tom Kerridge – and about the free Art in York Map, which she co-devised last year. Some 7,500 copies have been picked up and a second edition is due out.

“The idea was to make people rethink York a little bit and raise the profile of the city’s galleries,” says Inch. “People associate York with Vikings and history and that’s great, but there’s more to it than that. There’s a really creative scene here. When people pick up the art map they’re often very surprised by the number of galleries. It makes a really nice trail and you can spend a whole day doing it, with coffee and lunch on the way.”

Covering more than a dozen city centre galleries and art spaces, plus three outside York, it winds its artistic way around the tourist-filled streets. The Lotte Inch Gallery is at No 2.

Through the most crooked of front doors, it has appealing displays of contemporary ceramics, a selection of Peter Blake’s intriguing illustrations for Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, a colourful array of scarves, and Lotte Inch herself, bright and smiling. “People have the idea in their heads that galleries are snooty and uninviting,” she says. “I want to be the absolute antithesis of that. I want people to feel they can come in and look without having to buy. It’s the complete opposite of London galleries where you have to ring the bell.”

Before opening the gallery, she did an MA in Art, Museum and Gallery Studies and worked for the National Trust, creating a contemporary gallery space at Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire.

When the contract ended, she “decided to create my own job” by setting up a “pop-up” gallery in the centre of York, followed by two years as marketing and events officer at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at Leeds University. And then, as she says, she gave it all up and decided to try “being my own boss and answering only to myself” by opening a gallery.

“If I hadn’t, I would always have thought ‘What if...’” Her current exhibition is co-curated with Tom Kerridge, who likes to showcase his food on hand-made ceramic tableware. “I read about him commissioning hand-made plates for his restaurant. Then I met him in Harrogate and said: ‘Would you like to co-curate an exhibition?’”

The result is Dish, a collection of decorative and functional ceramics by contemporary potters. Inch resists, for the most part, showing obviously commercial art. “I think I possibly take more risks in terms of the art I show and the prices than many other galleries. In relation to London galleries, it’s cheap, but in comparison to York prices, it’s big-bucks. I’ve had something here at £20,000.” Did it sell? “No. It went back to London,” she admits.

Dish is at the Lotte Inch Gallery, York until May 6. www.lotteinch.co.uk