Bergamot Station

Bergamot Station review

The centre of Santa Monica's art scene is Bergamot Station, a former trolley stop that's now home to 30-plus galleries. If you head here on a Saturday night, you're likely to find more than one gallery owner uncorking the chardonnay as they launch a new show. And twice a year, the Santa Monica Auctions (www.smauctions.com) are held here, offering deals on A-list art released from private collections in LA.

Among the galleries are Peter Fetterman, a sophisticated purveyor of museum-level photography. High-concept abstraction is the mainstay at Ruth Bachofner; epic shows and experimental performances draw interested crowds of onlookers at Track 16. Robert Berman and William Turner, two of the standard-bearers for avant-garde West Coast abstraction, are both present; a more British bent inspires the shows at Mark Moore Gallery. Patricia Correia focuses on the passionate, vibrant and sometimes political traditions of Chicano art in SoCal; Richard Heller mounts show of post-illustration art; and Craig Krull casts his net wide enough to cover architectural photography by Julius Shulman alongside work by artists who draw inspiration from LA's natural world.