We had interviewed Iavor Lubomirov, the owner and director of Cable Depot, a gallery that was based in London and it has opened a new venue in Sofia now. We met this international art gallery at Artissima, in Turin, two years ago through the art curator Tiziano Tancredi.
The story of Cable Depot
How did Cable Depot come about?
Cable Depot was the culmination of over a decade working within an artist-led culture which flourished in London at the time. I opened Cable Depot in 2019 in a small industrial warehouse on the southeast shore of the Thames. Opposite me was Thames Side Studios – an enormous artist and makers studio complex. I was looking to create a new model space that would be fine tuned, first and foremost, around the needs of the artist. Simple but essential programming concepts like: ample time to develop ideas prior to inhabiting the space; walls accessible from behind for hidden electrical, technical and installation elements; interior wall dimensions in precise proportion for 16:9 projection… Following a typically two year conversation artists were invited to inhabit the space for extended periods of free creation. The results were transformative. In 2022, I began exploring the possibility of representing artists – most of whom I had been working with and collecting for over a decade.
From London to Sofia and come back
You started in London and recently opened a new venue in Sofia. As a Bulgarian, what is your perspective on the art market and the art network in Bulgaria? And why did you choose to open the space in The Women’s Market?
After three participations in Art-O-Rama (2022, 23, 24) and two years at Artissima (2023, 24) I was able to open my dream new gallery in Bulgaria this year. The choice of location at the Women’s Market in Sofia is significant historically, architecturally and for the diverse communities it represents. Cable Depot is located in one of the central squares of the market. It is in a former thrift shop with tall ceilings, next door to Punta Gallery, a Sofia based art space working in partnership with us.
Since opening in March 2025, Cable Depot Sofia has participated in two fairs. Art-O-Rama, where our debut in the Galleries section was recognised with a Special Mention at the Because of Many Suns Prize. Then, Cable Depot partecipated to Artissima where our booth was highlighted in an article by London art critic Tabish Khan. In June, Cable Depot Sofia hosted Bianca Boeckel Galeria from Brazil. In 2026, I am looking forward to gallery exchanges with First Floor Gallery Harare in Zimbabwe, and Bianca Boeckel Galeria in São Paulo. I am looking forward to do partnerships with Sold Out Design Sofia and Ravnikar Gallery Ljubljana at next year’s fairs.
The pool of artists
How would you describe your pool of artists (Charlie Warde, Georgina Sleap, Liz Elton, Victoria Rance)? What qualities convince you to represent them?
There are 3+1 qualities I look for in an artist. The first three I find so well summarised in a Ruskin quote in the text of Barbara Carnevale’s recent exhibition at Cable Depot, about the three Hs of fine art: “the hand, the head, and the heart”. The fourth is relationship. The artists Cable Depot currently represents are artists I have known, worked with, shown, supported and collected for years. This comes of necessity because the work that draws me is often the kind that takes significant time to make.
The qualities of the artists
Charlie Warde’s paintings require months of research and making (his process is meticulous and his subject matter demanding). Each of Liz Elton’s works has an embedded instability that will take years just to get to a place where you can even to start to assess them materially. Experiencing them physically is a spiritual encounter and their ephemerality plays its part in this, so although Liz’s message is much bigger than any of that, the poignancy is inescapable. Victoria takes sculpture into film and performance and creates these immense stories about the Earth, our common ancestral ground, with each other and with everything living around us, in order to understand the present and the future through a larger lens. Georgina’s process is immense. I always place her work as sculpture, but I first met her at the Prince’s Drawing School. Her work is so intimately connected with material, but it comes from human connections and experience, especially with traditional makers she has been working with in the UK and in Egypt. We are in talks about a show in 2027, watch this space.
What all of these artists have in common for me is the time and the journey they take out of their medium in order to be able to return to it.
The participation to the art fairs
You invest heavily in fairs such as Artissima, among others. What does participating in an art fair mean to you? Have your expectations been met?
My own approach I think may be a little idiosyncratic in that I have presented artists at the same two art fairs, which keep drawing me back for their insistence on curation and encouragement for pushing boundaries. The fairs are indeed a serious investment in the artists and the gallery, and for me every participation has been the result of an extensive project with the artists. For my debut at Artissima 2023, Charlie Warde and Davide Bertocchi spent time at Ivrea, documenting a significant monument of Italian architectural and social history. Bertocchi monumentalised his analog cameras in Italian marble, destroying them in the modelling process and Warde created a series of three copper plates of Bertocchi’s last photographs. It was beautiful and it was seen. Occula Magazine made us one of their ten highlights of the fair. Artissima and Art-O-Rama have given my artists invaluable exposure and I very much hope to continue to take part.
The art market range
Which segment of the market are you targeting? What is the price range of your artists’ works? Could you give some examples?
We have placed works with diverse collectors, but the price range of the artists I represent are typically between €5-20K, with some smaller works available in the €1-5K range.
What are your thoughts on digital art and more ephemeral practices?
Is the medium appropriate to the message: that’s the only question. I have worked with digital art curators, for example Pita and Elliott Burns of Offsite Project – an important platform for digital art curation – but my experience with online art is limited. However, the ephemerality of digital art seems uncertain to me. It feels fragile, but I also have no concept of what’s possible archivally. So Ephemeral art to me is a more material category: Eva Hesse, Anya Gallacio, but also Michael Landy and Gustav Metzger… and certainly Liz Elton whom I showed at Artissima this year and is currently showing at Cable Depot and neighbouring Punta Gallery concurrently. I understand of course that it’s a challenging position to take in a market setting, where archival questions are typically so pertinent, but from institutional to private collectors, buying something materially ephemeral has to be about more than the object itself. The experience of the works on a wall offers monumental possibilities, as they slowly show their changes. But it’s precisely the ephemeral nature of Liz’s work that allows it to live and breathe now, to move in a breeze as you walk up to it. It is not work that is concerned for its own life cycle, it contains a message to the future, to new life.
Liz Elton at Artissima
Liz Elton’s practice deals with waste, compost, and the recycling of matter. Why did you choose to present her research in a duo show in Turin with Charlie Warde? (Is there a connection to Arte Povera?) How did you expect collectors and art professionals to respond?
There is a long history behind this presentation. I have been thinking about showing Charlie and Liz together for several years. The three of us have been in conversation from the very beginning. Technically, they are both painters, both pushing what is possible with paint, both coming in and out of the grand tradition of painting to synthesize something completely new. But they are also both dealing with connected issues: waste and recycling, social living, these are societal and systemic realities. Part of our daily life. The response was really quite emotional. And Liz’s work does indeed connect quite naturally to the ideas and material approaches of Arte Povera.
If you were an art advisor, which artists represented by other galleries (similar or more established) would you recommend collecting or keeping an eye on?
Seung Ah Paik, whom I worked with years ago in London and who is now rising fast with Bortolami Gallery in New York. Check out her upcoming commission at Rubell Museum. Also Benjamin Jones at LOOM Gallery in Milan. His photographs are sublime.
Which artworks would you personally like to have in your own collection?
Oh gosh, a giant Seung Ah Paik canvas please! Or Le Moutier by Charlie Warde which is now in a wonderful collection but which I will forever miss.
She has collaborated for many years with art magazines such as Artribune, XIBT Contemporary, ArtApp, Insideart and Espoarte, preferring contemporary art in its many facets and media drifts.
