Overview: The London Art Fair is the capital’s longest running Contemporary and Modern art fair. Now in its 30th year, the event presents leading British and international galleries alongside specially curated spaces, Art Projects and Photo50. The Fair invites collectors and visitors to discover works by renowned artists from the 20th century to today. This year’s fair takes place from 17-21 January 2018, London Art Fair a great first stop to the 2018 international art calendar.
In the last three decades, London Art Fair has given access to iconic modern and contemporary art, as well as expert insight into the changing international market. The Fair is an established destination for both museum quality Modern British and contemporary work from leading global names. Sitting alongside the main Fair will be specially curated contemporary spaces Art Projects and Photo50, featuring the next generation of artists and collectives.
To celebrate of the Fair’s milestone edition, Museum Partner Art UK is inviting five prominent contemporary artists to select 30 standout works from its digital platform. Art UK is the online home to art from every public collection in the UK and the works chosen will be displayed as part of a one-off exhibition at the Fair. First introduced in 2014, London Art Fair’s annual museum partnership showcases the UK’s most important regional collections.
Exhibitor List:
55Bellechasse, Adam Gallery, Advanced Graphics London, Alan Wheatley Art, Anise Gallery, ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE LTD, Art First, ARTCO Gallery, ARTE GLOBALE, ARTITLEDcontemporary, Arusha Gallery Askew, Art ATELIER, AKI Austin / Desmond Fine Art, Beardsmore Gallery, Beaux Arts Bath, Beaux Arts London, Bernard Chauchet Contemporary, Art Berwald, London bo.lee gallery, Boundary Gallery Brownsword, Hepworth, Browse & Darby, Candida, Stevens Gallery, Caroline Wiseman, Modern & Contemporary, Castlegate House, Gallery Cavaliero ,Finn CFPR Editions, CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, Christopher Kingzett ,Fine Art Contemporary Collective, Crane Kalman Brighton, Crane Kalman Gallery, Cyril Gerber Fine Art / Compass Gallery ,Danielle Arnaud, DECORAZON gallery, Duncan R. Miller Fine Arts, Edgar Modern, England & Co Ewan Mundy, Fine Art Fairhead, Fine Art Ltd, Fine Art Consultancy, FIUMANO CLASE, French Art Studio, Galeria Miquel ,Alzueta Galería, Víctor Lope ,Arte Contemporáneo Galerie ,Artima Galerie, Calderone, Galerie Heike Strelow, Galerie Olivier Waltman, GBS Fine Art Ltd ,Gilden’s Art Gallery ,Glasgow Print Studio ,Goodman Fine Art ,Gormleys Fine Art ,James Freeman Gallery ,James Kinmont Fine Art, Jealous Gallery, Jenna Burlington Fine Art ,Jessica Carlisle, Jill George Gallery, John Martin Gallery ,Katharine House Gallery, La Lanta Fine Art, Lemon Street Gallery Liquid Art System Long & Ryle Maus Contemporary No 20 Arts / Galeria Carles Taché Osborne Samuel Paisnel Gallery Panter & Hall Piano Nobile Pontone Gallery Portal Painters Portland Gallery Purdy Hicks Gallery Quantum Contemporary Art Rabley Contemporary Rebecca Hossack Gallery SARDAC Serena Morton Skipwiths Stoney Road Press TAG Fine Arts ﬔe Cynthia Corbett Gallery ﬔe Drawing Works ﬔe Hanbury Collection ﬔe Redfern Gallery ﬔe Scottish Gallery ﬔompson’s Gallery UNION Gallery Urbane Art Gallery Venet-Haus Galerie VIGO Waterhouse & Dodd Wilson Stephens & Jones Woolff Gallery YIRI Arts
Projects
The galleries selected to participate in London Art Fair’s critically acclaimed contemporary section are always first on our list to see. Art Projects is a curated selection of the freshest contemporary artwork from across the world, with galleries from outside the UK making up two-thirds of the line-up.
As an important international platform for new galleries to showcase the most stimulating contemporary practice, the section continues to garner widespread critical acclaim. International galleries participating in Art Projects for the first time will be arriving from Angola, Australia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, UK, USA, New Zealand, Portugal and Turkey.
Dialogues: Curated by Misal Adnan Yildiz ‘Dialogues’ is a guest-curated section within Art Projects featuring collaborative presentations between 5 pairs of invited international and regional galleries. Misal Adnan Yildiz, curator, writer, and educator, curates ‘Dialogues’ for the Fair’s 2018 edition with the largest number of non-European galleries bringing female and female identifying artists only.
Participating galleries include Perve Galeria, Mov’Art Gallery, Starkwhite, Joanna Bryant & Julian Page, Galerie Tanja Wagner, Galeri Nev, Bowerbank Ninow, Alaska Projects, Hanmi Gallery and IMT Gallery.
Themes and Highlights: Taking part in Art Projects for the first time, 32 galleries will be presenting large-scale installations, solo shows, and group displays on a variety of themes.
Highlights include Nitra Gallery’s presentation of Theodoros Zafeiropoulos whose work explores qualities and form of layered photography where images are printed across raw materials including wood and glass for the design and creation of a brand new artificial landscape.
Gibbons and Nicholas will present a solo presentation of paintings and sculptures by Peter Burns featuring imagined characters as the staple of each piece; tying together the narrative of the presentation.
Plinth gallery known for their commission of David Shrigley’s renowned thumb sculpture in London’s Trafalgar Square will present artists they’ve commissioned to create works outside of their traditional practice, including Beatriz Milhazes ceramics.
The Contemporary London’s focus on minimalist installations will include Gary Colcough’s crafted sculptural objects that depict slices of landscape, and Jess Littlewood’s exploration on what it means to be human through one-off collages.
A major feature of Art Projects is Dialogues, which invites pairs of galleries to create a shared presentation, encouraging inventive collaborations and new relationships. ﬔis year Dialogues will be curated by Misal Adnan Yildiz, former Director of Artspace NZ and Artistic Director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. It will feature five partnerships between local and international galleries, each focusing on the representation and recontextualisation of the female.
Exhibitor List:
Art Projects AREA CREATIVA 42 Aria Art Gallery ARTCO Gallery BEARSPACE C&C Gallery CANAL Chiara Williams Contemporary Art Darger HQ Dundee Contemporary Arts Ed Cross Fine Art Galerie Lake Galerie Voss Gibbons & Nicholas Iniva LLE New Art Projects Nitra Gallery PAPER Plinth Stern Gallery taubert contemporary Contemporary London Turps Gallery Dialogues Alaska Projects Bowerbank Ninow IMT Gallery Galeri Nev Galerie Tanja Wagner Joanna Bryant & Julian Page MOV‘ART Perve Galeria Starkwhite
Museum Partner
London Art Fair has partnered with Art UK to stage a unique exhibition highlighting 30 remarkable works from the nation’s public art collections.
As the Fair’s official 2018 Museum Partner, Art UK will present its first ever exhibition – ‘Art of the Nation: Five Artists Choose’ – from 17 – 21 January 2018. Reflecting the mission of the charity and its digital platform – the show will shine a spotlight on the rich and diverse regional collections showcased on artuk.org , the online home to every public art collection in the UK, which features over 200,000 artworks from over 3,250 venues.
In an exhibition curated by Kathleen Soriano, Art UK has invited five leading contemporary artists to each select 20th and 21st century works from the Art UK online platform. Each artist has chosen up to six works within a theme that is both personal and speaks to their individual interests. The works selected will come from some twenty-five collections across the UK including Rugby Art Gallery and Museum Collections; New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge; Heritage Motor Centre, Warwickshire; South Shields Museum and Art Gallery and the University of Hull Art Collection.
In his selection, Oscar Murillo has taken inspiration from a Palestinian poem, selecting works which include Jets by Robert Priseman (1965, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum), a part of the artist’s series ‘The Promised Land’ which examines the conflict in Palestine from both sides. Sonia Boyce has based her selection upon a particular work of art, playing with its title, its form and its meaning in making her additional choices.
Amongst her choice of works is West Indian (1973) by Caribbean artist, Winston Branch from the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum collection. Meanwhile, Rose Wylie has focussed on the idea of ‘leaving the door open’, challenging the canon and shared systems of value that place artists on the outside of the art world.
Mat Collishaw takes a dark look at the shady world of violence and despair, his selection of works including Ars longa, vita brevis (1900) – ‘ art is long; life is short’ – depicting an aging artist, by realist painter Ralph Hedley in the collection of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums . Finally, Haroon Mirza makes a commentary on choice itself by surrendering his own to the daily shifting algorithms used in Google searches, revelling in the notion of choice as predetermined by a machine that only recognises it in a mathematical and non-emotional way. Amongst his choices is Girl Reading (1933) by British painter Adrian Paul Allinson from the University of Hull Art Collection.
Alongside a diverse range of works, the exhibition will also include pieces from Art Detective, a digital network which invites experts and the general public to help Britain’s galleries understand more about their artworks, helping to highlight unidentified works, sitters, places, events and unknown artists. During London Art Fair, visitors will be invited to discuss a number of mystery works in the hope of uncovering further exciting finds.
The exhibition’s focus on 20th and 21st century artworks reflects London Art Fair’s long-standing commitment to showcasing exceptional art from the 20th century to today. In 2018, London Art Fair returns for its 30t h anniversary inviting collectors and visitors to discover works by renowned artists from around the globe.
First introduced in 2014 in order to showcase important regional collections; London Art Fair’s annual Museum Partnership has seen collaborations with the Hepworth Wakefield, Pallant House Gallery, Jerwood Gallery and The Lightbox. Art UK is the first Museum Partner working almost exclusively in the digital space.
Photo50
London Art Fair’s 2018 curator for Photo50 is the Hemera Collective; a curatorial and collaboration led group specialising in photography and lens-based media, producing exhibitions and participatory programmes that draw from multiple disciplines with the aim to encourage new perspectives and facilitate debate.
This year’s edition of Photo50, titled Resolution is not the point., is curated by Hemera Collective, the first collective to curate London Art Fair’s annual exhibition of photography. The exhibition reflects the concerns with which Hemera operates, as a collaborative and evolving entity with different areas of expertise, who come together through a shared inquiry of photography and lens-based media. The exhibition title also alludes to an approach to exhibition making as one that is not defined by a singular frame or iteration, but networked – shifting focus and endeavouring to change ways of seeing and thinking. Resolution is not the point. considers photographic practices and images as a catalyst for interdisciplinary exchange and collective action. Photography, since the 19th century, has existed in and between traditionally defined boundaries of practice, from its use as a scientific apparatus to art – and back again, and it is this shifting landscape of contexts and definitions that the exhibition brings to the fore. The works are linked by this desire to draw upon the metamorphic nature of the photographic image. As practitioners continue to push the conceptual and technical boundaries of the many forms of photography and image-making; they are drawn to other specialisms and ways of working in order to communicate personal, social, and political ideas. From collaboratively produced research projects to artists that draw on the circulation of images, knowledge, and capital; Photo50 2018 examines vital directions in contemporary photographic practice.
The curatorial Hemera Collective was established in 2012 specialising in photography and lens-based media. Working with established and early-career artists, as well as photographic archives. Recent projects include Planetary Gardening, PhotoAccess, Canberra, 2017; Sites and Citations, ONCA, Brighton Photo Fringe, 2016; Secret Agent, Guest Projects, London, 2016 & the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, 2015. Since 2014 they have also published the London and New York Photography Diaries. The Collective has been developed through the collaborative work of various individuals including present members Jaime Marie Davis, Ashley Lumb, Helen Trompeteler and Kay Watson.
Artists Include:
Pio Abad | Larry Achiampong | David Birkin | Foundland Collective | Qiana Mestrich (play)ground-less | Susan Schuppli | Traces of Nitrate: Ignacio Acosta, Louise Purbrick, Xavier Ribas | James Tylor and Laura Wills | Marie Yates
TICKET INFORMATION
London Art Fair returns for its 30th anniversary, bringing the best in modern and contemporary art to the capital. Book your tickets to London Art Fair 2018 now for an unmissable start to the international art calendar. Tickets are available to be booked in advance or on the door. Advanced prices end midnight 16 January 2018.