14 January 2010

London art fair


I went along to the London Art fair and enjoyed my trip. There are plenty of different styles and pieces to see and although there was quite of lot of somewhat uninspired and rather boring art for my taste there were some gems mixed in.

I particularly like the huge Susie Hamilton canvas on the paul stolper stand, recognisably by Susie Hamilton but her work is changing quite a lot.  She remains one of my favourite artists.  One day I will get a big piece by her to go with my (very small) RCA secret postcard.

I was mesmorised by the Mauricio Ortiz painting on the Eyestorm stand and loved some of the work on the Mark Jason stand.


I also enjoyed seeing the work at quite a few of the galleries that were exhibiting in the project space, particularly the Bearspace gallery in Deptford which had an eclectic mix of very limited edition works by up and coming artists, many of which I liked.

Is it me or did there seem to be more editioned work (and galleries selling editioned work) over originals now?  Also there was quite a lot of gallery flipping going on.  I saw at least 2 galleries who had the recent print that Bridget Riley released with the Whitechapel gallery and they were asking for 4 to 5 times its original cost. 

Bargain of the fair is on the Advanced Graphics stand.  They are selling a smallish Albert Irvin screenprint, edition of 250, for £250 plus VAT.  It is to celebrate the release of a book of all Irvin's prints which is released in September and for that price you also get a signed book and an invite to the private view so that "Bert" can dedicate your book.  An absolute steal I thought.  I was very tempted...but resisted.   My friend who I went to the fair with bought one though, and elected to have it John Jones framed for £125 plus VAT.  Not a bad price at all.

3 comments:

Kate Jones said...

Glad to hear that we're framing the work for you! We also enjoyed the fair, a great selection of work by established and emerging artists.

Anonymous said...

I thought that the work here was fantastic too, I haven't seen a collection of such stimulating pieces of art for a while!

pezlow said...

Thanks for your comments. Kate - I love John Jones framing. I get all my very prized pieces framed by you guys, just wish I could afford it for all my pieces.