Matthew Slotover (Live at Maison Estelle)
Talk Art
Russell Tovey and Robert Diament c/o Independent Talent
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
New @TalkArt podcast episode! Season 27 finale!
Robert meets Matthew Slotover OBE, legendary publisher and entrepreneur. This episode was recorded live from Maison Estelle in London.
Matthew Slotover co-founded the art magazine Frieze in 1991 and grew into a major media and events company that has a focus on the art scene and since 2003 produces the annual Frieze Art Fair in London, later joined by fairs in New York, Los Angeles and Seoul.
In 2021 he opened Toklas, a Mediterranean restaurant in London, and in 2022, he launched Fort Road Hotel in Margate.
Matthew is currently chair of Turner Contemporary, Margate, and a board member of Sadlers Wells and the Walpole Group.
He is a founding member of the Gallery Climate Coalition, and a founding board member of Murmur, an environmental charity dedicated to using the Arts to combat climate change. Matthew served as a trustee of the Arts Foundation until 2024.
Follow @MSlotover
Thanks for listening to Season 27. I will return soon for a whole new series!!!!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning, everyone. My name is Robert Diamant. I am a gallerist based in Margate. I am partner at Carl Friedman Gallery, and I've been there for about 16 years. And it's actually how I met today's guest, Matthew Slotover, the incredible founder of Freeze Art Fair, Freeze Magazine, Tockless, |
| 0:24.8 | the beautiful restaurant, which actually last time I was here, I had to leave an event to rush |
| 0:29.0 | to Tockless to host another event. Yeah, and also the Fort Road Hotel in Margate and Matthews |
| 0:34.8 | recently also become a trustee on the board of Turner Contemporary in Margate, |
| 0:39.1 | the museum. And over the last kind of 11, 12 years, there's been a huge regeneration of the town, |
| 0:44.7 | which has been a real privilege to be part of. And I also host a podcast called Talk Art. So thank |
| 0:50.1 | you for being here. So Matthew, can we talk a bit about you growing up? Because I was really |
| 0:54.9 | fascinated about how you got to the place of actually founding Freeze magazine, way before the |
| 1:01.5 | art fair and way before all your other kind of entrepreneurial activities. What was it that |
| 1:06.3 | first caught your imagination about the art world or artists? Yeah, well I studied psychology at university. |
| 1:13.7 | I've never had a day's training in art or art history in my life. |
| 1:17.4 | Growing up, I loved design, photography, but I didn't really understand contemporary art. |
| 1:22.6 | It just didn't grab me, and historical art didn't really mean anything to me. |
| 1:26.9 | I was rejected from my school |
| 1:28.9 | for my art O-level course because my drawing wasn't good enough. So I always kind of maybe had a bit |
| 1:33.6 | of an interest but it was just never sparked. And I left university, I didn't know what I wanted to do |
| 1:38.2 | and knew I didn't want to do psychology. And I had a friend at Samartans and we began to look at art. |
| 1:43.8 | And it was just around the time that |
| 1:45.8 | all of the Damien Hurst, Carl Friedman warehouse shows were being shown. And I just thought it was |
| 1:52.1 | amazing. What Rob's gallery that he works with, it's his partner, Carl Friedman Gallery, and Carl, |
| 1:59.3 | he's like the ghost in the room because he was almost |
| 2:01.9 | my kind of mentor at the beginning. Someone said, you've got us to go and see this show. It's in a |
... |
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