Kay goes to London for the art fair

Whilst tweeting from the London Art Fair one of our editors responded with the challenge, ‘Review?’, so this is how I have come to write this blogpost.

I should say at this point, as I concisely tweeted when asked if there were any good Northern artists’ work at the fair; I don’t know a great deal about Northern artists and that I wouldn’t be trying to gauge the profile of Northern artists at this high profile event.

Following my admission, I began to pay more attention to the names of the artists and began to question if a) I had heard of them before and b) if I had, did I recall them as being from our locality? 

To begin with, this was a successful approach, I recognised David Hockney’s name if not his work, and recalled that he is associated with the region (I have to admit at this point that I did question myself and affirmed my instinct by checking Wikipedia). This led to me proudly tweeting a photo of ‘Kaisarion and all his Beauty’ – priced at £3,600 +VAT .  I was, however, still none the wiser to his wider influence and works. 

This level of attention to artist details didn’t last long as I found myself concentrating more on the names and backgrounds of the artists than the works themselves, and for me, art is about the piece not the creator. So I retracted back to wandering around the fair and seeing which works attracted my eye, documenting some of the pieces by taking photos with Instagram and making a note of its title and the artist. 

The fair itself was huge, spanning three floors and had over 100 galleries presenting a wide selection of works.  Buyers, students and art admirers alike weaved around the temporary gallery structures to view works from artists such as Warhol, Hirst, Lowry and Hockney through to Katharine Morling, Clive Barker and Iain Nutting. 

There were also works displayed in small spaces, hidden amongst the maze of the layout, with galleries hanging them on the artificial walls that created cupboard-like spaces. You walked around the building feeling that you were sure you would find a new gallery space or corridor of work if you walked through the labyrinth of temporary structures enough times. 

There were works situated in the middle of the spaces such as a Little Red Riding Hood sculpture, which I’m sure would terrify the best of us in a bleary eyed state at night, and Chris Milton’s fun Lego-like sculpture.

 The prices of pieces varied as much as the works presented and items costing hundreds were situated next to others priced at thousands. The works were clearly displayed in an orchestrated manner, for the more popular works to draw you in to the spaces so that you may discover and invest in some of the lesser known works.

 As I’m fairly ignorant to the majority of the art world, the fair was for me predominantly exploratory and each corner turned could lead to me coming across work as fascinating, challenging or beautiful as those seen moments before. 

What has interested me more than anything from my visit to the art fair is my documentation of it. Since my return I’ve realised that the works that I documented were not pieces by artists I am aware of, they were by artists I’d have never come across if I hadn’t gone to this show.

Even though I’m a big fan of Ralph Steadman’s work, as I am of Warhol and Rob Ryan; I didn’t feel the need to take photos of their offerings, even if I’d never seen those individual pieces before. 

Maybe part of it was that I didn’t want to consume those pieces in the same way I didn’t want to take away from the experience of seeing them in person.  The transition from the role of an individual voyeur of the work to sharing them through a mass, digital medium such as Twitter, though allowing a vicarious experience, wouldn’t have replicated the experience of having that piece physically in front of you to admire.

In terms of artists from the North that I’ve since discovered, there are some that I wouldn’t know about if I hadn’t gone to the fair. However, it’s by looking through the Fair Guide and researching the artists listed that I’ve discovered them, rather than seeing the pieces and documenting their work. In fact, it appears that I didn’t take pictures of work by any Northern Artists other than Hockney.

Researching every artist included at the fair is quite a lengthy process as I’m sure you can imagine, so consequently, the two I have chosen to focus on have surnames starting with letters at the beginning of the alphabet, namely Kenneth Armitage and Sarah Ball.