Running until the 19th January, the London Art Fair is the largest UK fair for Modern British and Contemporary art. It takes place at the Islington Business Design Centre. That’s the Islington Business Design Centre, not the Islington Business Centre. You wouldn’t be silly enough to pitch up at the Islington Business Centre by mistake would you? Good. Nor would I…
As well as over a hundred galleries selling contemporary and modern work, near the entrance is a large stand from the Hepworth Wakefield Museum. Called ‘Barbara Hepworth and the Development of British Modernism’ it comprises works by Hepworth, Henry Moore and their contemporaries and is the fair’s first partnership with a museum. There are sculptures on display of course, but also unexpected pieces, like an intensely pencilled drawing of a surgeon at work by Hepworth herself.
Art-fatigue is an ever-present danger in large exhibitions such as this. To guard against this debilitating disease, you ought not to try to look at every artwork in the show. But that’s difficult. You want to keep going around every corner because it might just be there that you find the artist of your dreams. A few of the works that drew the attention as I pottered around getting lost include small atmospheric cityscapes by Akash Bhatt, who has previously been a finalist in the BP Portrait Award, paper collages of empty, slightly threatening American suburbia by Casy Ruble, and a series of tiny chairs made from sparkling wine muselets. My notes say they were by the exotically named Joame Tinker, but it turns out the artist is called Joanne. Everyone will have their own favourites – I also spotted a Matisse and some Chagalls, as well as a Francis Bacon print triptych for £46,000.
A survey taken of the participating galleries shows that emerging contemporary art is seen as the most undervalued part of the art market. This sector has been given its own section of the fair, called Art Projects. Over thirty galleries are exhibiting here, showing contemporary art from across the globe. One stand that stood out was from Maple Street’s Hanmi Gallery.
Junebum Park, Parking, 2001. Single-channel, 5.25 min. Courtesy the artist and Hanmi Gallery
A video piece by Junebum Park shows the artist appearing to play with real cars, reversing them into parking spaces and pushing them along the road. It is a simple idea which works well as a visualisation of something akin to Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. Park plays God with the unsuspecting drivers, playing with ideas of predestination and fate.
The London Art Fair is big. When I left I thought I had seen everything but I later discovered I had missed a photographic section called ‘Immaterial Matter.’ Curated by Jeremy Epstein and Charlie Fellowes it is somewhere on Gallery Level 2. If you find it can you tell me what it was like?
Tickets are £17 on the door or £13 in advance
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