Champ Lacombe Founder Lucy Chadwick on Bringing the Art World to Biarritz
The gallerist discusses leaving New York for the Basque coast and welcoming longtime friend Matthieu Blazy for Chanel’s return to its historic seaside haunt.
In 2020, you left Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, the New York gallery where you had been the senior director for 10 years, to open Champ Lacombe, a contemporary art gallery of your own. It was the height of Covid, and the place you chose was way off the art map: Biarritz, on the Atlantic coast of France. What possessed you?
It feels odd that occasionally I feel grateful to Covid. My husband is in fashion and was doing a job in Paris. My son was 3 and in New York with me. Covid was just happening, and everyone was going to get groceries with fishbowls on their heads. Airports were closing, but we could still fly in that direction. We had a small apartment in Biarritz. We said we would meet there.
Was there any contemporary art presence in Biarritz?
It was always intriguing to me that the art world hadn’t come to Biarritz. It seemed like a huge risk, but there was a community of collectors that I was connected to, and they were getting used to remote conversations.
Your husband, who goes by the single name of Duffy, is a hairstylist who had built up a clientele. Was it hard to relocate the family?
Somewhat serendipitously, at that point most of his clients were European fashion houses, and he was on an airplane more than he was in New York.
You grew up in London, with an architect father and a mother who was a textiles buyer for Liberty. How far back does your love of Biarritz go?
Since I was 8. When I was at school, the family of one of my closest friends had a house there. I went one summer, and I fell in love with Biarritz. It’s governed by forces bigger than you. You can’t have airs and graces. There is a connection to the land and the sea, rooted in Basque culture. I went home and told my family, and we came the next year. My family fell in love with the place, and it became a tradition. Biarritz provided the connection to a magic I was missing. There is a spirituality that the Basque people have that’s in the air and keeps you grounded.
Last April, Matthieu Blazy, the artistic director of Chanel, staged the launch of his cruise collection in Biarritz. That is where Coco Chanel opened her first couture house, in 1915. How important is fashion there?
The early 20th century saw Biarritz become a key incubator for Chanel, as well as for Jeanne Lanvin, Paul Poiret, Jean Patou, and others. Coco, in particular, tested out a less restricted style, and that notion of ease has remained. Matthieu is a close friend, and having him and his collaborators come and immerse themselves here was a joy.
Chadwick’s own T-shirt and jeans. Chanel dress (with attached necklace) and shoes.
The inaugural show at a gallery usually indicates its future direction. In the past five years, you have mounted shows of a wide range of contemporary artists, including Arthur Jafa, Tim Breuer, Zeinab Saleh, and Gaetano Pesce. How did you assemble your first exhibition, in July 2021?
I put together a group exhibition based around one of my favorite artists, Sturtevant. I had worked very closely with her in New York, and got to know her and her daughter very well. She had passed away many years before, but I could still hear her voice speaking to me. The centerpiece of the show was her two-channel projection, Plato’s Dual Action: Same/Idea/Transposed. On one side, there is this incessant shaking and noise. She didn’t want you to know what it was, but it was cheerleaders’ pom-poms rattling back and forth. The other side, you’re inside a car with the windshield wipers going in a heavy rain. It is about the transmission and disruption of an image, which is so central to contemporary art. Once I had figured out my first chess move, I could go from there.
In 2024, you opened a second Champ Lacombe, in London. Why?
I’m originally from London. A year and a half ago, a friend was giving up the lease on this little space on Woburn Walk, in Bloomsbury, the oldest pedestrianized street in London, with Dickensian charm. It’s a tiny storefront near where I grew up. I decided to give it a go. I was also very ready to not keep it open beyond a year if it was too much of a strain. But it’s balanced out.
Do you plan to keep expanding?
We’re five years old. Around us are endless conversations about people closing or the shift in the art market. I want to maintain a sense of stability in our structure, but not have that be something that squishes our ability to play and take risks—being ambitious but not overstretching.
