Very Art Space Gallery and Suzie Kennedy poses as Monroe with an iPhone, by Daniel Sachon
The 28th edition of the London Art Fair at the Business Design Centre in Islington brought to London a great selection of British and international art from the early 20th century to the present day.
Jerwood Gallery from Hastings welcomed visitors with its masterpieces from Modern British Art. Official partner of the Fair, the gallery displayed works by Barbara Hepworth, John Samuel Tunnard, John Piper, Christopher Wood in the exhibition titled “Coast” and curated by Liz Gilmore (Director, Jerwood Gallery) and Lara Wardle (Curator, Jerwood Collection).
The Gallery presented also the works of contemporary artists such as John Bratby, Prunella Clough and Marcus Harvey whose “Maggie’s Island 2015”, a reclining nude of Margaret Thatcher/Britannia, certainly drew the attention of the visitors.
The works exhibited at the Fair ranged from paintings, to sculptures, ceramics, photography and video art and they were an authentic and inspiring representation of both contemporary British and international art.
The Art Project “Dialogues” focused on the communication between galleries and artists across geographical borders by showing works from UK based and worldwide galleries. In this international platform next to UK ones you could meet galleries from Berlin, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hague. In the words of Natasha Hoare, the curator of this Project, works were selected and linked “in both assonance and juxtaposition … to expand existing networks of artistic exchange and influence, and to forge new ones.”
Part of Art Projects were also the fair debutant London based galleries Iniva, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Ncontemporary, New Art Projects and White Conduit Projects together with BAC Gallery (Colombia), GALERIE bart (The Netherlands) and Matèria (Italy), a contemporary art gallery from Rome (www.materiagallery.com), which presented the solo show by the Italian artist Giulia Marchi.
The Open Gallery (London) showed Jasmina Metwaly’s “Remarks on Medan”, a series of 12 video paintings depicting the Egyptian Revolution in 2011.
Through all these Projects a visual concert of creativity flew from the exchange and interaction between the arts.
“Feminine Masculine: On the Struggle and Fascination of Dealing with the Other Sex” was the photography exhibition curated by Federica Chiocchetti for Photo50. Loosely inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 masterpiece “Masculin Féminin”, the 50 photos explored the relationship and the dynamics between women and men. The intercommunication between the works invited the visitors to abandon a monolithic point of view and play with the satirical, sad, romantic, or clichéd look of the artworks without offering a definitive answer.
The 2016 edition of the London Art Fair remarked once again that this event is not only a market place for art collectors, but it is a cultural hub for the international art scene.
Alessandro Conficoni & Chiara Corleoni for Lazagne art magazine
Rachel Ann Stevenson London Art Fair 2016, Bo.Lee Gallery, London title: Virgils Echo Photo by Alessandro Conficoni
Cathy Lewis London Art Fair 2016, Bo.Lee Gallery, London UK title Willow Pattern and Other Stories photo by Alessandro Conficoni