Aidan McNiell’s ‘Core Crop No.341’, 2014, manipulates the London-based Canadian artist’s own large-format photograph of an English rose
As Frieze focuses attention on art as business, could there be a new model for the art market, one which places less emphasis on putting on exhibitions, relying rather on the Internet and Art Fairs to sell work? Maybe so, though we’re not there yet: for the most part the online market operates in a different commercial zone, and it’s a physical programme which secures entry to fairs. Yet there is a growing tendency for galleries not to simply close if that considerable commitment stops suiting them, but to embark on a different existence. Payne Shurvell, for example, having run a programme from Hewitt Street for 3.5 years from 2010, have subsequently used pop up spaces – as with Aidan McNiell’s show (to 29 November) at the Canadian High Commission. WW have sub-let most of their Hatton Garden space, but retained an office there from which to run such initiatives as their Solo Award leading to a show at the London Art Fair. And Bristol’s WORKS|PROJECTS, one of the leading – indeed, one of the few – commercial galleries outside of London, recently took an upbeat view of ‘moving forward to explore a more dynamic model than its past gallery-based programme, combining a series of strategic development initiatives with a peripatetic programme of exhibitions’. Those approaches have all evolved on the back of the credibility earned from running a more conventional space, but it will be interesting to see both whether they work, and – if they do – whether art businesses might be founded, rather than rebooted, on such models.
Amba Sayal-Bennett won this year’s WW Solo Award: here’s ‘Cleo Contra-Auguste’, 2014: Drawing Projection, Tape, Paper, Celotex
Most days art Critic Paul Carey-Kent spends hours on the train, traveling between his home in Southampton and his day job in Surrey. Could he, we asked, jot down whatever came into his head?
