Isabella Summers reveals her most cherished London sanctuaries

There exists a particular magic in discovering a city through the eyes of those who inhabit it most thoughtfully, and Isabella Summers, the composer and multidisciplinary artist behind the moniker isamachine, proves herself to be precisely such a guide. Rather than parading the predictable monuments and well trodden paths that define the conventional London experience, Summers instead unfolds an altogether more intimate and generative geography, one that speaks to the spaces and institutions that genuinely nourish the creative consciousness.

Perrotin, the venerated galerie with a formidable presence across London, Paris, Tokyo and Shanghai, has long positioned itself at the vanguard of contemporary artistic discourse. This latest collaboration demonstrates once again the gallery’s profound commitment to celebrating and contextualising the creative ecosystem that animates cultural life. By inviting Summers to articulate her own cartography of inspiration, Perrotin creates a conversation that extends beyond the transactional relationship between gallery and viewer, instead honouring the networks and places that sustain artistic practice itself.

The Garden Museum, with its specialised focus on botanical heritage and horticultural history, represents the kind of thoughtful institutional space that rewards the curious and contemplative visitor. Prince Charles Cinema, that intimate venue dedicated to film as art form, offers a sanctuary for cinematic experience stripped of commercial grandeur. Meanwhile, Dean Street Studios, where creative practitioners gather to realise their most ambitious visions, exemplifies the working spaces essential to any thriving artistic community. These are not the destinations one finds in guidebooks, but rather the genuine coordinates of an active cultural life.

What emerges from Summers’s selections is a portrait of London not as a static museum, but as a living, breathing ecosystem of creative encounter. Each location she illuminates carries within it the possibility for artistic transformation, whether through the direct engagement with historical knowledge, the immersive experience of cinema, or the collaborative energy of shared studio space. Her choices reveal an artist’s priorities and preoccupations, the kinds of places that feed creative work and sustain the emotional and intellectual reserves necessary for serious cultural production.

This curation serves as a generous gift to fellow practitioners and to anyone seeking to understand how London’s artistic vitality operates beneath the surface. It is a reminder that true cultural wealth resides not in the grandest institutions or most celebrated addresses, but in the patient accumulation of spaces where serious work happens, where ideas are exchanged, and where creativity finds its proper ground.

Imagery courtesy of Perrotin (@perrotin).