The London Art Fair opened at the Business Design Centre today. Tom Jeffreys casts his beady eye over proceedings.
One of the UK’s biggest and best established Modern British and Contemporary art fairs opened to the press today, and good lord it really is enormous. The London Art Fair 2010 takes over the Business Design Centre in Islington for a five day exhibition of work from over 100 of the country’s premier art galleries and there really is a hell of a lot to get round.
Spread across three floors, the London Art Fair encompasses almost everything that has happened in art over the past 50 years or so; well everything that you can sell at least. From abstract prints by Josef Albers at Alan Cristea to mounted papier-mâché giraffe heads at Rebecca Hossack, and from Tracey Bush’s exquisite paper butterflies at jaggedart to Ali Mill’s elegant little collages at Cynthia Corbett Gallery: the London Art Fair really is pretty comprehensive.
But for me, the undoubted highlight of the fair – and what sets it apart from the proliferation of similar such events across London – is Art Projects. For 2010 this part of the fair is more extensive and more exciting than ever before. With a blend of Zoo Art Fair edginess and Affordable Art Fair charm, this section really is a delight.
Deptford’s bearspace are showing Print Now, an exhibition of wonderful prints by the likes of Billy Childish and Spoonfed favourite, Jane Ward; Charlie Smith London are exhibiting a series of delicately grand oil paintings by Emma Bennett; and the ICA have a range of prints on display, including one by the ever-intriguing Matthew Brannon. His deceptively simplistic compositions somehow combine a latent perversity with something glamorous and restrained.
My favourite contribution however is that of Sesame Gallery, whose permanent space is conveniently located just across the road from the Business Design Centre. Behind a lush red curtain is a room full of occult weirdness by Latvian/Russian contemporary artist Henrijs Preiss. A host of paintings on board – in bold reds, blacks, gold and cream – feature an instantly familiar vocabulary of esoteric symbolism. You recognise it immediately but cannot know quite from where. Pagan pentagrams, cabalistic diagrams, Byzantine icons: all overlap in layers of abstract composition. And yet the referential specificity has been removed, leaving these images empty and meaningless, and all the more powerful for it.
One minor criticism I have of the London Art Fair is that many of the galleries are simply exhibiting the same works they showed before at various fairs throughout 2009. It can make one feel a little jaded, and that is why Art Projects – all fresh and keen – is so utterly brilliant.
The London Art Fair is at the Business Design Centre from 13th-17th January 2010.
Image credit: Henrij Preiss, No. 231, Acrylic and varnish on wood, 2009
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