When the London Art Fair postponed their January event until April because of the uncertainty of the Omicron Variant of COVID it was the right thing to do. The fair moved to 20 – 24 April 2022, at the Business Design Centre, Islington location.
After a year’s hiatus, we are all excited at the prospect of the UK’s first major art fair of 2022. The London Art Fair (LAF) connects collectors from UK-based and international galleries with London’s longest established Contemporary Art Fair. LAF provides a unique opportunity to discover and champion outstanding contemporary art while exploring well established 20th-century tastemakers.
The Fair creates a nurturing environment for collectors at all levels
It provides expert insight into the changing international art market. Sitting alongside the leading Fair, curated sections Art Projects and Photo50 feature the next generation of artists, collectives and gallerists, showcasing increasingly innovative and interactive ways to engage with art. The Fair’s strong gallery lineup is also complemented by an extensive programme of insightful talks, panel discussions, interactive performance art, and onsite activations from the Fair’s partners. Each January, London Art Fair is an unmissable opening to the international art calendar.
LAF has announced additional information on exhibitors and curated spaces on display at the Business Design Centre. This year will see over 100 galleries from around the world, including Austria, America, Portugal, Sweden, and Australia. It will feature work by some of the world’s most renowned artists working across various media, including Henry Moore, David Hockney, Bridget Riley and Paula Rego.
London Art Fair will also host their annual curated spaces, detailed below:
Photo50: The Fair’s annual showcase of contemporary photography. No Place is An Island, curated by Rodrigo Orrantia, considers the idea of an island, looking at practices expanding the possibilities of photography.
Platform: For this year’s annual themed section, guest curator Candida Stevens has chosen Music and its part in Contemporary Art exploring the intersection of visual art and Music.
Art Projects: The Fair’s annual showcase of the freshest contemporary talent from across the globe will include the New Media Room with Dreams Must Explain Themselves, an accompanying exhibition of new media initiatives curated by Pryle Behrman.
The Fair has also announced that Cambridge-based New Hall Art Collection will be this year’s Museum Partner. The exhibition Myth-Making and Self-Fashioning: Women Artists from the New Hall Art Collection will present over 20 artists from the largest collection of art by women in Europe, including well-renowned artists such as Maggi Hambling, Rose Wylie, Miriam Schapiro, Tracey Emin and Paula Rego, who will present a recently commissioned work.
The latest edition of Photo50, No Place is An Island, curated by Rodrigo Orrantia, presents works by British and UK-based artists responding to the idea of an island. Echoing John Donne’s celebrated book No Man is an Island, the exhibition explores what it means to be an island and its multiple possibilities towards the future.
The exhibition’s title also alludes to the idea that contemporary photography is not an island or an isolated medium. Instead, the selected artists will showcase photography as part of a more comprehensive practice, pushing and redefining its boundaries through sculpture, performance, moving image and sound.
This exhibition also celebrates ten years since the seminal Photo50 show entitled The New Alchemists, curated by Rodrigo’s mentor and friend Sue Steward, who passed away in 2017. No Place Is An Island references Steward’s work and ideas, bringing them to the present by looking at how photographic art has evolved in the last decade. The exhibition connects a generation of established and mid-career artists with emerging practices working around the same interests and, in most cases, directly inspired by artists in the show.
Curator Rodrigo Orratoria said: “The works in this show connect with the topical issues of our time, but also to a universal narrative, the journey to an idealised place. I’d like to start conversations about what it means to be an island and how we construct it in our minds.