Image:Tracey Snelling/Fireside Motel, Vacancy (detail)/2005/Chromogenic Print mounted on aluminium (edition of 20, 2ap)/ 30cm x 50cm/Courtesy of Monika Bobinska
23rd year for London Art Fair 19th – 23rd January 2010 at the Business Design Centre, Islington
London Art Fair, the largest Modern British and Contemporary art showcase in the UK, opens again to the public at Islington’s Business Design Centre next week. The Fair celebrates its 23rd year in 2011, bringing together over one hundred leading British galleries, unique curated art projects and a contemporary photography showcase selected by a specialist panel.
Highlights of the 2011 Fair:
– The main section of the Fair includes over 100 Modern British and Contemporary galleries of the finest calibre. The Fine Art Society will be bringing a lost original illustration by Christopher Wynne Nevinson for the War edition of Blast, a key Vorticist image that was found last year in a US thrift store. Contemporary galleries this year include Vegas Gallery, BARTHA CONTEMPORARY, FOLEY Gallery, CHARLIE SMITH london and Danielle Arnaud.
– Art Projects returns for its seventh edition with 31 UK, European and American galleries presenting curated displays. Engaging with contemporary economic themes, Guillochon Gallery (London) present a group show responding to the monetary crisis, including Alexis Milne’s video piece featuring footage of civil unrest, “Riot part one and two”. Meanwhile WW Gallery (London) present a range of art ‘products’ in a stand modelled on a superstore aisle complete with a checkout and roving promotions girl. International work includes emerging Korean artists including San Keum Koh exhibited by the Hanmi Gallery (London), and younger Latin American artists presented by Lodeveans Collection (London). Meanwhile there are several art projects from galleries in the East End of London: Monika Bobinska, NETTIE HORN and the youngest gallery in the Fair, PayneShurvell.
– Maurice Einhardt Neu Gallery present FADMEN, in collaboration with FAD website. In ‘DO NOT OPEN’ 15 artists are invited to deposit a piece of work in a safety deposit box which is then padlocked and closed with a wax seal. Each artist must add their signature to a document confirming that they have submitted a work. Purchasers receive a box and do not know the nature of the work.
Each box costs £2000.
– Installations feature prominently, with provocative work by Glaswegian art collective littlewhitehead presented by SUMARRIA LUNN (London) at various points around the Fair – outside of the traditional Fair stand – including a series of darkly humorous, lifesize, hyper-real sculptures drawn from news imagery.
– Photo50 will present a fifth year of the contemporary photography showcase, featuring 50 works, all for sale, selected by a distinguished panel: Zelda Cheatle (Curator and Director of the Tosca Photography Fund Collection), Celia Davies (Head of Projects, Photoworks), Sebastien Montabonel (European Senior Specialist, Photographs, Phillips de Pury) and Joanna Pitman (The Times). The work includes a broad range of approaches to contemporary photography with established artists such as Helen Chadwick showing alongside emerging practitioners.
– Showing as part of Photo50 is ‘Maggie’, a remarkable sequence of pictures of Margaret Thatcher taken from photographer Lisa Barnard’s series 32 Smiths Square, which documents the abandoned former Conservative Party Headquarters in London. Found within the building during the ‘clear out’, the photographs had become stuck together and the photographic chemicals had started to ‘eat away’ at her image.
– London Art Fair is delighted to have Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres as the official charity beneficiary for 2011 and in partnership with the Fair will hold an auction of 20 artworks by leading contemporary artists including Maggi Hambling and Yoko Ono at the Preview Evening on Tuesday 18 January.
– Tours, Talks and Discussions: This year’s talks programme brings together professionals from the visual arts sector to give advice to collectors, debate key topics and consider broader themes illustrated by works exhibited in the Fair. Speakers are drawn from The Art Fund, Contemporary Art Society, National Media Museum and The Fleming Collection alongside well-known and respected curators, photographers, collectors and academics, including Iwona Blazwick. Also, responding to demand at last year’s Fair, there will be a greater number of guided tours.
– Cass Art Trail: Cass Art is hosting a special family art trail around the 2011 Fair. Children accompanied by an adult, will be able to pick up a copy of the trail and complimentary Cass Art bag from the Information point at the entrance to the Fair.
