The Scottish artists left thousands of pounds out of pocket after gallery collapse

Painter Helen Flockhart, from Glasgow, is owed around £25,000 for ten paintings sold by the Arusha Gallery in London which she was not paid for before the venue collapsed.

Meanwhile, artist Thomas Adam, from Edinburgh, will have to pay £750 in a "release fee" to a storage company owed money by Arusha, or face his work being auctioned off as part of the liquidation - without receiving any of the sale price. Meanwhile, the Norman Gilbert Trust, the family of a well-known Scottish artist who died in 2019, is also owed around £20,000 from the sale of paintings.

The gallery, which was initially headquartered in Edinburgh, but closed its Scottish branch on Edinburgh’s Dundas Street after opening a bigger venue in London, went into liquidation last August. It was headed by Bella Arusha Collins King, who is now living in Wales, where she rents out properties through AirBnB. The gallery’s other director, Guy Bargery, died last year.

The final liquidation hearing in Edinburgh Sheriff Court took place last month - with the case passed to a third party to prepare a report. However, the group of artists has been told that they will not receive any compensation after bills owed to HMRC, bank loans and the liquidator have been paid.

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Ms Flockhart is among a number of artists who had exhibited work at the gallery and are owed a combined total of £585,000, with one painter, Charlotte Keates, believed to be owed more than £400,000 alone.

Ms Flockhart said: “It is around a year’s salary for me. The only reason I managed to survive was that I was really lucky in that I got a big grant from the Royal Scottish Academy, the Blackadder Houston Mid-Career Painting Award. But I am owed that money and I’ll never get it back.

She said the warning signs came when Ms King, who had extensively refurbished the London gallery before opening, began to cut costs at exhibition openings.

Ms Flockhart said: “Formerly, she'd put on really lavish openings. The first opening I'd had in Edinburgh, she got a company to decorate the gallery with plants and they put a whole garden in the gallery with flower beds. At my second, there were people handing out canopes and cocktails.”

By her third exhibition, at the new London gallery, there was minimal “wine in a tin” and Ms King did not attend.

“I’d heard of other artists who had entirely dry openings,” Ms Flockhart said. “We stopped getting any catalogues or invitations sent out, it felt like things were falling off a cliff. Other artists started asking me ‘are you getting paid?’

She added: “I'd got on really well with Bella, I really trusted her. She'd done really well for me, she's a brilliant sales person, really exceptionally brilliant.

“It’s just unbelievable. People still say to me, ‘there must be something you can do about this’, but it absolutely consumed 2025 for me.”

Mr Adam said he had done two solo shows with Arusha - one each in Edinburgh and London - as well as a group show.

He said: “The majority of the work from the London show, they kept down there, so they could continue to try to show it to clients. But obviously I didn't realise they weren't paying their storage fees.”

Now Mr Adam has been told he needs to pay the fee to London-based storage company ArtMove to be allowed access to his own work. He will then have to fund shipping on top to return the art to Scotland. He has created a new artwork and risograph print he is selling in a bid to fund the costs of obtaining his other work.

He said: “It’s crazy. It’s just protocol, but the way they word it is, they're able to dispose of the work how they see fit.

“It's just that typical situation where the small person, the artist, loses everything. It's pretty rough for the artists, who can’t afford any of this.”

ArtMove has been contacted for comment.