In a restored cast-iron building at 75 Leonard, in the heart of Tribeca, sits a 4,000-square-foot space with 17-foot pressed tin ceilings, two exhibition galleries, a viewing room, and offices. Southern Guild, the Cape Town gallery co-founded by husband-and-wife duo Trevyn and Julian McGowan, will soon open its doors.
This won’t be the gallery’s first go at an American outpost. Southern Guild operated a space in the Melrose Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles from February 2024 until January 2026, when it shuttered permanently. There were a lot of learnings there, as the couple surveyed the tastes and interests of collectsors and visitors and tested new ideas, from bespoke gallery dinners to live performances. “We’re much more experienced within the American market now,” Julian says.
“LA was experimental,” Trevyn adds. “What’s exciting about New York is that it feels permanent.”
For sales director Andréa Delph-Dorcely, the Tribeca gallery represents not only an opportunity, but a statement. “In a moment when the market feels cautious and risk-averse, there is something powerful about arriving in New York with fresh energy, new ideas, and a program that is both confident and considered,” she says.
For nearly two decades, Trevyn and Julian, whose backgrounds are in interior design and set design, respectively, haven’t just built an art gallery—they’ve cultivated an ecosystem of cross-disciplinary artists committed to material experiments and process-driven work, supported by the gallery’s production, logistics, and fabrication infrastructure. I witnessed this firsthand in Cape Town, where I visited the GUILD Residency ahead of Investec Cape Town Art Fair, the biggest art fair in the Southern Hemisphere. Informal, flexible, and tailored to artist needs, the residency emphasizes research, independent work, and knowledge exchange—but without the requirement of producing work for an exhibition or presentation, as is common for many programs. In the residency’s sprawling, airy loft, paintings from the gallery’s artists line the walls, the space an explosion of light and color. Nearby are the gallery’s main offices and a warehouse, fitted with a production wing, photo studio, and onsite crating and shipping facilities. Massive bronze tree branches lie in custom-made wooden crates as a logistics team prepares to ship them. “No photography” signs are posted on walls to protect unfinished works.
At Southern Guild, the intimacy of collaboration is structural, integral. The cofounders don’t just work with artists; they join forces with them, also integrating input from their sales directors and managers, a team of mostly women. “We see ourselves as partners and collaborators,” Trevyn says. “Together, we make more than the sum of our parts.”
Many of the artists they represent are guided by a similar ethos, with collaboration at the center of their work. Three years before Southern Guild was founded in 2008, Andile Dyalvane and Zizipho Poswa cofounded Imiso Ceramics. Through Imiso, clay does more than shape vessels; it explores collectsive memory, becoming a conduit for spiritual symbolism. Poswa’s massive sculptures, often well over two meters tall, serve as symbolic monuments honoring Xhosa cultural traditions, matriarchal heritage, and African womanhood. “My work is challenging on a conceptual and technical level. Working with Southern Guild creates an enabling environment for me to produce large-scale works,” she says. Dyalvane emphasizes clay’s life-affirming connection to the land. “My practice draws from what is channeled in from ancestral memory, collectsive cultural memory, dreamscape visions, and nature’s guidance,” he says.
Inaugurating the gallery next month are US solo-debut presentations of two South African artists, painter Mmangaliso Nzuza and conceptual artist Usha Seejarim. Nzuza’s large-scale oil paintings harken back to early 20th-century Cubist traditions, depicting angular figures in natural and social environments, while Seejarim’s conceptual works engage household items to investigate gender, labor, and power through the transformation of everyday objects.
Back in Tribeca, the hardwood floors shimmer in the afternoon light. The walls of the gallery are bare, a fresh coat of paint still wet. I imagine what the gallery will look like when the first show is mounted in a few short weeks. LA planted the seeds of apprenticeship. Tribeca is where the work will blossom.
Southern Guild New York opens to the public on April 24.