Louise Cary: Can you tell us about your latest exhibition at South London Gallery?
Margot Heller: We’re very excited to be presenting Ubiquity II, American artist, Leonardo Drew’s first solo show in a London institution. It’s a monumental site-specific installation in our Main Gallery and runs from 30th May - 7th Sept 2025. The work is made up of masses of shards of broken and painted wood, paper, mirror and other materials, all created in the artist’s New York studio. Leonardo’s process is meditative and involves intense repetitive labour in transforming and eroding materials by hand before assembling them into his installations. Drew’s works play on the tension between order and chaos, and there’s an almost obsessive quality to the way in which they are constructed.
Leonardo Drew: Ubiquity II, South London Gallery, 2025. Photo: Andy Stagg
Louise Cary: How did you get the work from New York to London?
Margot Heller: For the SLG show the materials were shipped from Galerie Lelong in New York to London via sea freight in three 40ft containers. It was a significant amount of material to transport and it broke down into numerous components which were packed onto over 18 pallets/commercial bins. The pallets were loaded into three 40ft high cube containers by the team at Crozier NY, ready for export to London via Southampton Port. Upon arrival in the UK, the pallets were unloaded by the Crozier UK team at Tower Bridge where they were staged in preparation for onward delivery to the gallery. We were really happy that everything went smoothly with the shipping and Leonardo was pleased too.
Louise Cary: Why did you choose sea freight?
Margot Heller: The SLG has an environmental policy to use sea freight when feasible to reduce carbon emissions associated with transportation. This exhibition's total gross weight was 1783 kg which equates to carbon emissions of 0.097 tCO2e. If the same shipment had been sent out by air, emissions would be in excess of 8 tCO2e so choosing sea freight made a huge reduction in environmental impact.
It also allowed for the components to be sent as palletised packages so that no wooden cases were required.
Louise Cary: Was there anything unusual about this project?
Margot Heller: I’ve been Director of the South London Gallery for more than twenty years, but there are still surprise challenges with every exhibition we present, and Leonardo’s show was no exception to that! We're really thrilled with the final installation which is getting a fantastic reaction from visitors and a reel of the installation is our most liked instagram post ever with more than half a million views and 35,000 likes so far! We're really grateful to Crozier for being our logistics partner on this fantastic project, and hopefully many more to come.
Read more about the exhibition here.
