5; days in the life of MATTHEW FLOWERS

Monday: Drop Patrick off at Rushmore School in Hackney and then to Gallery for a week of new exhibitions. It's a major exercise as our spaces are so big. Worse than usual this time - there are more than 140 works in Small is Beautiful Part XIV - Sex, and we have to open a day early to avoid clashing with the Turner Prize dinner on Thursday. We've wanted to do sex for a long time and it's a good antidote this year to the dreary Turner. David Hepher's Two Triptychs exhibition doesn't take long to hang. There are two incredibly large paintings and only two walls that will accommodate them. This show is complimentary to Hepher's retrospective opening tonight at the Museum of London. Hepher is one of my heroes. A great painter of our age. He depicts the architecture of today from suburban house fronts to high-rise blocks including stains and graffiti.

TUESDAY: Management meeting in my office. Business has been very good this year, but November dipped due to a poor performance at the Cologne Art Fair. This is put down to two factors: the splinter Berlin Art Fair and the poor German economy with its present high tax. By the end of the meeting, though, we're bullish: we're about to open three enticing exhibitions with a lot of business expected in the first couple of days. In the afternoon I meet Patrick's teacher. He got a good report in every subject and apparently he's well-behaved and helpful. Is this the same boy that comes to stay every weekend? Then to a governors' meeting at Byam Shaw School of Art, the best independent art school in the country. End the day playing indoor football at Highbury with such star players as Angus Deayton, Clive Anderson and David Baddiel. I'm on the losing side.

WEDNESDAY: Weekly staff meeting where Sarah Howgate, who is developing our US market, reports exciting news confirming the sale of Rachel Whiteread's drawing to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They saw it in our survey British Abstract Art: Works on Paper in August. Couple of hours spent pricing the exhibitions. Press view at 1pm for the Hepher show is attended mostly by critics from foreign newspapers - a sad indictment of the lazy English (though Richard Ingleby from the Independent did come). Newspapers review music and books by living musicians and authors all the time. Why won't they give regular space to contemporary visual art? The usual excuse is that they have to cover important exhibitions of dead artists. At 3pm I meet Louise Hunter from Heart of Hackney and Simon Slater from Hackney 2000, who want my ideas for a new Museum of Contemporary British Art in London's East End which now claims the highest number of artists living and working in one area in the whole of Europe. Back to Gallery for our Sex private view. By 7pm the place is heaving with artists, collectors and leather jackets. Afterwards, dinner for Hepher and Edward Lucie-Smith at Granita, home of New Labour.

THURSDAY: Early morning run on Clissold Park. Quite beautiful with the sun breaking through the mist. At Gallery get a panic phone call from Huei who's flying to Amsterdam to prepare for a film shoot. She got distracted by our two-year-old, Jackson, and left her passport behind. I jump in the car, pick it up and get it to her at Heathrow just in time. Take Lucinda Bredin to the Turner Prize, the most disappointing to date. It's one thing to have an idea, but a completely different thing to create a work of art. Walking through the exhibition I got a curious impression of irrelevance - nothing engaged me. As someone said, it was like walking through the foyer of a tube station. There's more to life and art than a tube map.

FRIDAY: Took the day off to look after Jackson. He's great fun now, starting to talk and chases the kittens round the house. Pick Patrick up from school. Last engagement of the week is Lise Meyer's birthday party shared with her friend Henrietta Conrad. Angus lays on bangers and mash and frozen vodka. I try to persuade Richard Wilson, who collects contemporary Scottish art, to include some of our Scottish painters such as Howson, Watt and Kondracki. Admire the beautiful small John Keane painting on the wall but think Angus is ready for a big one.

Matthew Flowers manages Flowers East. `Sex' is reviewed by Tim Hilton on page 31 of the `Review'