In September Sadie Coles HQ opened two painting shows – a posthumous survey for atmospheric Dutch oddball Co Westerik and a hyperbright display by Venezuelan-born Alvaro Barrington – that spoke both to the gallerist’s unpredictability and her market savvy. (Figurative painting is extremely in.) The details may change, but Coles’s gallery has been on the money in every sense for over 20 years now. Earlier this year, she gave over her main space to modish writer/critic Charlie Fox, who filled it with a spooked, spacey group show orbiting around monstrosity, while elsewhere the gallery gave real estate to brash New York multimedia artist Borna Sammak and recent signee and rising digital-art star Lawrence Lek, while also finding space for trad blue-chipper Elizabeth Peyton (ahead of her National Portrait Gallery retrospective in London). Meanwhile, stalwarts like Sarah Lucas, Helen Marten and Matthew Barney continued to mop up the institutional shows and demonstrate Coles’s ability to keep di¢erent bases covered.