“I understood the importance then, and I understand the importance now, for my own children, of how music and literature shapes us - from providing connections to the land we left, to healing the trauma of the reasons we had to, from telling tales of the journey we made to safety, to settling in the safety of a new home. Music, food and art brings communities together, working towards the same goals – providing healing, togetherness and unity.” – Ernesto Leal

Ernesto Leal was born in the southern Pacific naval port of Talcahuano, Chile. As a result of the 1973 CIA-led military coup d'etat and military dictatorship of Pinochet, his family was forced to flee into exile and in 1976 was given political refugee status in Fife, which was sponsored by the National Union of Scottish of Mineworkers and the World University Service.

Leal spent his teenage years in the culturally rich landscape of the festival city of Edinburgh. The family hosted Chilean solidarity fundraising evenings, ‘peñas’, which brought together folk musicians, poets, and political activists from Scotland & Chile. Inspired also by the DIY ethos of the 50s New York Beat Generation, these were the starting points for Leal’s creative, detailed and entrepreneurial approach to club promotion, curation and programming, that brought together music, literature, film, fashion, performing and visual arts with a mix of established and new names, both local and international - an approach unique to the Edinburgh club scene at the time, which formed the blueprint for Leal’s projects spanning a 40-year period.

In the mid 80s, Leal’s first major project was the creation of his nightclub, El Cambalache (‘the junkyard’). To house the nightclub, Leal founded a brand new Edinburgh venue above the famous, but at that time seedy, Café Royal bar, close to Waverley Station. Leal had discovered an opulent but disused function room, once part of the fashionable 1860s Café Royal Hotel, and gave it a new lease of life as the first Latin and Bebop club in Scotland. 

Widely considered to be the best club in Edinburgh, El Cambalache immediately attracted a following among the creatives in the city’s thriving music, theatre and literary scene. In August 1986, Leal curated a programme of DJs, bands, comedy acts (showcasing the breaking talent of Craig Ferguson) and theatre (performances of ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ to mark the 80th birthday of Samuel Beckett), interspersed with film and visuals. During the same period, he joined electronic band Lip Machine, exploring the intersectionality of electro, hip-hop, fashion and magazine culture, with ex-post punk members of Delta 5's Alan Riggs and Scars Robert King, which often performed at El Cambalache. 

In 1990, in pursuit of his next big project, Arthrob, Leal found his way to Shoreditch, Hackney. A crucial moment in the history of the area, as property developers, artists and musicians were just starting to converge, it was here that Leal’s entrepreneurial spirit was fully ignited and he found his working base, enabling him both to experiment and also see the opportunities globally.

In this post-industrial landscape - early years of the YBA scene, Asian underground sound of Joi Soundsystem’s & Norman Jay's nights at Hoxton’s Bass Clef, Whirl-Y-Gig chillouts at Shoreditch Town Hall, and acid house warehouse parties (which Leal had been hosting), Arthrob focused on the intersection of acid house culture and literature within Leal’s trademark programming. To this he now added innovative brand graphics, and at this point his long collaboration with Jason Kedgley (Tomato design collective) began.

Leal invited Irvine Welsh, who’d been to El Cambalache, to deliver his first London readings from recent works, notably the cult novel ‘Trainspotting’, and smoothed the way for the film production company who’d bought the rights, to meet Welsh. Leal subsequently invited book publishers to work on club and music festival events as a vehicle to promote new writing to new audiences. These often explored Jamaican sound clash or NY poetry slam inspired formats with other club promoters, and resulted in the Arts Council/Arthrob ‘Defining A Nation Live Literature Tour’ of both unknown and established writers reading their works in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Brighton and London clubs in 1999.

After a bidding war, Arthrob signed a label deal with Coalition (PWL)/Warner Brothers Records, and a music publishing deal with Trevor Horn’s Perfect Songs/ZZT Records, enabling Leal to release music to tie in with the literature he was promoting, and to fully develop and communicate the Arthrob brand. Although preferring to stay in the background, the press caught onto Leal as one of the young guns of the 90s Shoreditch scene. 

With access to Warner’s back catalogue, Arthrob released club mixes, notably Steve Reich’s bestselling ‘Reich Remixed’, Towa Tei’s ‘Sound Museum’ with Kylie Minogue & Bebel Gilberto, and Fini Dolo’s ‘Rise’ with Sonia Sohn & Saul Williams. Arthrob Recordings went independent in 1999, establishing a recording studio in Brick Lane’s Truman Brewery and hosting parties in Ibiza, Tokyo and Barcelona. Arthrob Reissues released Alex Arnout’s remaster/remix of Delta 5’s punk funk anthem, ‘Mind Your Own Business’ in 2021.

In the performing arts, Arthrob commissioned and produced ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’ for Bertolt Brecht’s centenary in 1998, co-devised with Random Collective, with Bill Drummond, Iain Sinclair, Miranda Sawyer, Neil Bartlett, Bella Black, Hanif Kureishi and Tam Dean Burn. This was site-specific theatre over one afternoon in 7 Hoxton/Shoreditch venues, each venue chosen to reflect a different sin: Hoxton Hall, Ye Olde Axe strippers’ pub, Lux cinema, Lion Boxing Academy and St Monica's RC Church Hall. In the former Barclays Bank, ‘Greed’ was performed by the KLF’s Bill Drummond, for whom Arthrob had produced the ‘K Foundation Burn A Million Quid’ book launch.

Arthrob continued to showcase the talents of the evolving arts scene, focusing on collaborations with art publishers and galleries, helping the V&A to stage the first Friday Night Lates, and putting on the ‘Pulse…’ music series at Whitechapel Gallery in 2003.

Now heavily in demand as a consultant, Leal worked for advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and art, fashion and gallery-based projects with Asian cultural promoters and collectives, including Banksy’s first exhibition, which was in Tokyo. More recently Leal has worked on projects for neoclassical music label, Lo Recordings.

Ernesto Leal’s Club Culture ourhistory archival project was launched in 2008, with the aim of collecting, conserving, studying, interpreting and exhibiting the history of Club Culture. The first exhibitions were at Shoreditch’s Londonewcastle Project Space: ‘A Celebration of 20 Years of Acid House’ (touring as ‘ArtCore’ to Selfridges London, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai) followed by ‘East End Promise: A Story of Cultural Migrants 1985-2000’. Subsequent exhibitions, exploring scenes in Ibiza, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, New York and Estonia, were held at Red Gallery between 2011-2018, with further exhibitions at Fabric and, most recently, at Ministry of Sound private members’ club in 2025. A large format publication series, designed by Jason Kedgley, accompanies the project.

Leal founded Red Gallery, his second venue-based project, in 2010. The Reuben Brothers entrusted Leal with the guardianship of a semi-derelict building with a wall bearing street art by Banksy, on a landmark Shoreditch site at the helm of Rivington Street. Fuelled by a series of tenancy-at-will lease agreements, ranging from between just 7 days to 6 months, Leal ran the building for nearly 10 years, innovating the gallery format into a dynamic, community-driven space that nurtured strong European connections and reached an international audience.

Red Gallery was an expression of Leal’s pioneering ethos, grounded in the political principles of his Chilean upbringing, run as a collective for the collective, with a small and tight team at its centre, brimming with ideas and activity. Upstairs, the floors were filled with artists, then developed as a hub for silicone creatives, notably Soundcloud. Downstairs was a multi-use space for club, performance and theatre, with adjacent gallery space. Leal encouraged a young, culturally curious audience to come forward, who wanted to put on their own events at the venue.

At the request of Hackney Council, Red Gallery utilised the 20,000 square foot carpark, branding it the Last Days of Shoreditch, with an open air food night market and screenings. Red Gallery staged the ‘Fête Worse Than Death’ street festival in Rivington Street in 2014. Working closely with Hackney Council and the police, Red Gallery pioneered standards in public safety, residential relations and the night-time economy, Leal being one of the founders of the Night-Time Industries Association. Red Gallery set the tone for the commercial development of Shoreditch. Famed for the constantly evolving programme of street art commissioned by Leal, the site, now the Art’otel, still preserves the wall bearing the Banksy.

Leal holds a degree in Creative Industries from Goldsmith’s, University of London, and has lectured for the British Council.

“I started thinking about Red Gallery and all the other things, Arthrob and so on, as art pieces. It’s because they’re all a combination of all those years of peñas, ceilidhs, the Chile Solidarity Campaign, hanging out with miners, doing the clubs in Edinburgh. Red Gallery was everything put together into it, all that knowledge that I’d gathered throughout. And, it was never going to be a nightclub, it was never going to be a theatre piece, it was never going to be an art gallery… ‘It’ was going to be something completely different.” – Ernesto Leal