2011 sees more contemporary art fairs in London than ever before. Tom Jeffreys examines the causes, and the potential consequences.
Whatever one's view of Frieze Art Fair – which lowers its copious behind onto the green grass of Regent's Park come October – there's no question that for that one week at least, London is the centre of the contemporary art market. During Frieze Week London is flooded with gallerists, critics, curators and art-buying oligarchs from across the world, and the impact on the capital's art scene is immeasurable. All across town, the commercial galleries strive to put on their very best shows, artist-run spaces clamour for attention, and many of the big public institutions choose Frieze week during which to open their major exhibitions.
In addition, of course, are all the other art fairs. And this year there seem to be more than ever. As well as established fixtures like Affordable Art Fair, Multiplied, 20/21, Art London, London Art Fair etc, 2011 also sees the return of both Moniker and SUNDAY Art Fair for their second years, whilst The Future Can Wait is back, this time in collaboration with Saatchi/Channel 4's New Sensations. Several new fairs are launching too: Moving Image London, with a focus on video art; Sluice Art Fair, emphasising not-for-profit artist-run spaces; and then later in the year, Affordable Art Fair are opening a second London fair, in Hampstead, and The Other Art Fair is allowing artists to bypass the gallery system and sell straight to the public.
This explosion of new fairs suggests some structural shifts in the way art is bought and sold, as the fair and the auction now seem to dominate market news. In addition each new fair contributes something new to the art fair experience. Just as Moving Image stemmed out of the need to supplement existing art fairs (“In New York,” organiser Ed Winkleman explains, “about 1/3 of the galleries showing a video at Moving Image were also participating in one of the other larger fairs”), so too did SUNDAY. Rebecca May Marston, one of the organisers of SUNDAY, explains how the fair grew out of something lacking from Frieze: “We realised Frieze Frame was a project-selected section rather than gallery-selected section, and so when many of us didn't get in second time round in 2010 we decided we needed to do something else, which also coincided with Zoo ending.”
With the demise of the much-loved Zoo Art Fair after 2009, as well as the cancellation of SELECT Art Fair due to “challenging market conditions” you'd think this would be a difficult time to launch a new art fair. But Marston, who is also Director of Hoxton-based contemporary art gallery Limoncello, suspects that the end of Zoo actually paved the way for this proliferation of new fairs: “Zoo was so strong that when it departed it left a gap open for more,” she opines. On the other hand, Winkleman suggests that it's a global phenomenon: “It's not just London. There are more fairs nearly everywhere right now, because the place collectors buy art has shifted from the gallery to the fairs. There are more fairs because more galleries have recognised this shift.”
The important thing is that each of these new fairs offer something very different – both from Frieze, and from each other. Moving Image sets itself apart through its exclusive focus on a single medium. Due to technical issues, expense and the time needed to watch video art, it's a medium that is generally under-represented in art fairs. As Winkleman explains, Moving Image, which launched last year in New York, “was conceived to create an event with the energy and urgency of an art fair while presenting moving-image-based works on their own terms. That often means in a space where all the signals tell you it's OK to slow down and take your time, as well as a venue in which audio and lighting requirements can be provided without the kind of expense that would take at one of the standard fairs.”
While these fairs feed off the energy caused by the presence of Frieze, The Other Art Fair – as its name suggests – is defiantly striking out on its own. Taking place in late November, the fair allows artists to sell direct to the public. It's an intriguing and unique concept. As Fair Director Ryan Stanier explains, “we are very different to Frieze with our own aims and objectives. Our aim is to create an independent art fair that has its own set of values and standards but at the heart differs from other fairs as it's not gallery-led.” Artists are being vetted by a panel that includes Godfrey Worsdale from BALTIC (he's one of the Turner Prize this year) and the fair promises something very different – for exhibitors and visitors alike.
A similar but more unusual approach comes from artists Karl England and Ben Street – the pair behind Sluice Art Fair, taking place on South Molton Street during Frieze Week. The name comes from the subterranean Tyburn River (“not actually a sluice,” admits Ben, “but not far off”) that runs beneath both Frieze and Sluice, and this river acts as a kind of metaphorical link between the two fairs. While, like The Other Art Fair, Sluice is offering something different, it also goes beyond that. The aim is to represent contemporary art practices whose non-commercial nature mean they're under-represented in art fairs, and yet they're choosing to do so in the context of an art fair. Sluice therefore seeks to explore the its own contradictions – between the idea of not-for-profit and the ethos of an art fair. Sluice “offers an alternative model of what an art fair is, or could be,” explains Ben. “Or even what galleries are, or could be.”
And so, the very concept of the art fair continues to shift and wrigglingly evolve.
Frieze Art Fair is at Regent's Park from 13th to 16th October 2011
Moving Image London is at the Bargehouse from 13th to 16th October 2011
SUNDAY Art Fair is at Ambika P3 from 13th to 16th October 2011
Sluice Art Fair is at The Music Room from 15th to 16th October 2011
The Other Art Fair is at The Bargehouse from 24th to 27th November 2011
Image credit: Frieze Art Fair 2010 in Regent's Park, London. Photo by Linda Nylind for Frieze. 17/10/2010
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