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 London
calling!London Art Fair 2016
Report and photographs by:-
Madeleine Saghir.
LONDON Art
Fair, is the UK's
premier fair for Modern British and contempory art, took place from 20
January to 24 January 2016. The fair was held at the Business Design Centre
in Islington and it attracted 24,528 people, which would indicate another
strong year for the UK art market.
Jerwood Gallery, Hastings was announced as
the Fair's museum partner for 2016, which marked the fair's 28th edition. In
previous years, partnerships with the London Art Fair included:- The
Hepworth Wakefield (2014), and Pallant House Gallery (2015) both of which
were successful.
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The fair showcased a vast amount of contempary paintings, photographs and
sculptures. Liz Gilmore, Director of Jerwood Gallery said:- "It gave
an absolutely fantastic platform from which to showcase important works from
the Jerwood Collection and to introduce our 2016 exhibition programme to an
art savvy and receptive audience. Literally thousands of people visited our
stand and we were overwhelmed by their response to and engagement with our
Coast Exhibition, Marcus Harvey bronzes and John Bratby nude."
London Art Fair consisted of a series of
collaborations between emerging UK and international galleries for
'Dialogues,' a section of Art Projects guest curated by Natasha
Hoare with the intent of encouraging and fostering relationships between
galleries on a global scale. Natasha Hoare commented:- "Dialogues is a
project that enables collaborative presentations by commercial galleries in
the setting of London Art Fair. Pairing international spaces with UK based
galleries, we hope to exploit the trappings of working across geographical
divides, with all the attendant creative leaps and productive
mistranslations. British artists will be brought together across stands in
both assonance and juxtaposition, shown alongside practitioners based in The
Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium and further afield to expand existing
networks of artistic exchange and influence, and to forge new ones."
Not only this, London Art Fair also previewed highlights of the large scale
installations, solo shows, thematic group displays and a combination of
platform gaming and drawing. The bridging of art and technology encourages
interaction, like visitors who were invited to game and to draw, which they
appeared to enjoy.
There were many art pieces on offer, many of which I personally found to be
incredibly interesting, some were thought provoking, and some were simply
beautiful to look at.
Alan Wheatley of Alan Wheatley Art sold works by a range of artists
including Alan Davie; from £1,000 to £60,000, which highlighted the event's
triumphs:- "It's been very successful for us, the best in all our
outings at the Fair, selling right across the board."
This was followed with more positivity from fellow Modern British dealer
Goodman Fine Art who also sold several works by Alan Davie and a Paul Feiler
'Tribal Figure' for £68,000.
Piano Nobile, who exhibited alongside the Jerwood Gallery, sold an Epstein
bronze to a 'major new' Swiss client, and obtained a record price of
£50,000 for a John Golding painting. Work by William Crozier was also sold
in the region of £100,000.
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A brisk trade was also reported by
contemporary dealers. London based emerging artist, Hyojin Park, proved
popular with collectors at the Business Design Centre. There were also
exciting sales of work by Korean artist Kwang Young Chun from £50,000 to
£100,000. The French gallery, Very Art Space, also managed to sell works
from most of their artists, such as the acclaimed Chinese artist Yiming Min,
whose 2 sculptures from his recent UK debut exhibition were sold for £10,000
each! All in all, the London Art Fair was a huge success for the art
world, and it is expected to appear again in 2017.We would like your views,
on what is art... With 2016 setting out to be an interesting year for the
art world, and there are many headline grabbing shows due to hit the
galleries this year, which means it will be an exciting time for artists...
Oddly though, the world's headlines have, so far, started this year in a
very different direction to what most would have expected... 2016 headline
grabs have already begun with Brooklyn artist, Lisa Levy, and her
'work' called:- 'The Artist is Humbly Present', a
'seriously' odd protest, over the pond in the USA,
especially in New York. This work portrays her sitting nude, on a toilet for
2 days, as part of a performance piece trolling the art world. So what do
you think of art and the price of it? Also, would you like to see such
London Art shows in Liverpool? Please email us your thoughts and, if you
attended, please let us know! This, for me, was a very interesting
experience and I got to see some amazing art. Hopefully, we will get these
events heading to Liverpool soon! Would you be interested in going and
buying art from a fair like this on Merseyside? To let us know your views
and thoughts, email us to:-
News24@SouthportReporter.Com.
We would like to thank Hanmi Gallery for asking us to cover this event. They
told us that:- "We have been thrilled have been participating in
London Art Fair again. Our stand featured a solo exhibition of multimedia
artist Guem MinJeong, in the Art Projects section." To find out more
about the Hanmi Gallery, in London Seoul, visit:-
HanmiGallery.Co.UK.
Click on
here to see our
photographic coverage...
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Click on
here to see our photographic coverage...
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