As I start writing this I am in the midst of curating a show of photographs by Charles March, for the rough warehouse visual arts space I work with in Bermondsey S.E.1. The conjunction of artist and location will strike some people as strange for many reasons. Charles March is best known nowadays as the Earl of March, holder of one of Britain’s great aristocratic titles (he is a direct descendant of Charles II, though the Merry Monarch’s French mistress, Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth). He is also the gifted entrepreneur who has made his estate at Goodwood in West Sussex famous for both horse-racing and motor sport. What is he doing slumming South of the River?

Answers to this question are easier to give than may appear at first sight. Bermondsey is very rapidly becoming London's new artists' quarter. The exhibition is, among other things, a celebration of that fact. Directly above our ground floor space at the Bermondsey Project are two floors of studios managed by the Bow Arts Trust. Three streets away is the enormous new gallery created from another and even bigger warehouse by White Cube. There are a number of other galleries and studio complexes in the vicinity. London is now a major centre for the international art world. The only other European city that houses as many studios is not Paris but Berlin. And Berlin does not have nearly as many galleries, public or commercial, which feature the latest developments in contemporary art.