Detail of Joan Miro, Untitled, 1968, Credit Gildens Art Gallery

One of the biggest fairs of the year, the London Art Fair returns in January 2014 for its 26^th edition. Taking place from the 15 -19 January at the Business Design Centre in Islington, it is the leading destination for Modern British and contemporary art and we have had a little sneak peak at what is new at the fair this year.

Main Highlights:

 

Some of the main highlights include the announcement that the award winning gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield, is the museum partner for the upcoming edition of the Fair. Frances Guy, Head of Collections at The Hepworth Wakefield, will curate an exhibition called ‘Barbara Hepworth and the development of British Modernism’ focusing on works by Barbara Hepworth and her contemporaries including Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon and others.

Another exciting new addition to the fair will be Tokyo-based Whitestone Gallery, which will exhibit a presentation of GUTAI, a Japanese avant-garde artist group from the 1950’s and will feature artist Chiyu Uemae at its core.

Art Projects:

One of the most exciting sections of the London Art Fair is the Art Projects, which showcases the freshest contemporary art from across the globe. This upcoming year a new ‘Dialogues’ section will be launched, curated by Adam Carr and will feature collaborative presentations between invited UK and International galleries. Many of these galleries and artists are working together for the first time and the section promises unique, shared presentations featuring the freshest contemporary art from across the globe. It will feature large-scale installations, solo shows and group displays, alongside an extensive film and performance programme.

The ‘Dialogues’ galleries are:

• DREI, Cologne/Limoncello, London
• Galleria Stereo, Warsaw/ The Sunday Painter, London
• SABOT, Romania/Maria Stenfors, London
• Frutta, Rome/Seventeen, London

Adam Carr comments, “ That galleries converse, interact and exchange knowledge is not new, but yet rarely framed within the context of art fair. In contrast to the conventional format of separate gallery presentations, ‘Dialogues’ sets out to encourage collaboration, establishing a new constellation in the relationship between galleries, art fairs and the public through their display.”

Other Art Projects will include TYRON St, as the youngest gallery at the Fair, exhibiting photographic works by Italian artist Ra di Martino, documenting her travels to iconic desert film sets. British rising stars Nicole Morris and Alison Erika Forde will also enjoy solo shows in Art Projects. Morris, who has recently been nominated for the Max Mara Prize for female artists, will use sculpture, architectural interventions and props to create an environment around a central video work for Space In Between. Forde, one of the youngest artists to ever have a solo exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, will exhibit sculptural pieces created from found objects with The International 3.

Photo50:

The Fair’s annual guest-curated exhibition of contemporary photography returns for 2014. Entitled ‘Immaterial Matter’, this year’s exhibition is curated by Charlie Fellowes and Jeremy Epstein, Directors of Edel Assanti, and will examine the increasingly indiscernible distinction between the digital and the material. The 50 artworks selected investigate our understanding of these two classifications, and to what extent they effectively delineate our world and our fields of experience.

Displaying traditional lens-based photography alongside digitally-generated imagery, video and web-based work, the exhibition will feature artists such as: Aram Bartholl, Joe Hamilton, John Houck, Nicolai Howalt, Andrew Norman Wilson and Kate Steciw.

As curators Charlie Fellowes and Jeremy Epstein say, “’Immaterial Matter’ will demonstrate the irrevocable altered state of photography as a classification in the post-internet era, in which images exist in potentially infinite alternative manifestation. This exploration is enacted playfully at times, in work that attempts to situate itself on the boundary between the ascribed realms of the digital and material, and progressively elsewhere, in works that describe new ontologies and geographies that are developing as a result of the prevalence of free circulating digital information.”

A Photography Focus day will take place on Wednesday 15 January and will include a programme of talks, tours and discussions examining contemporary photographic practice and market concerns.

London Art Fair
15-19 January 2014
Business Design Centre, Islington