London Art fairs in October 2008

And just like that, another year comes round and it's art fair week in London again. The big story is that it's getting tough for the satellite fairs - three haven't returned (Year09 being a particular shame), though there are now some free fairs filling the gaps. So here's a map of the art fairs in London in October 2008.

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Zoo
Now a well-established fair, Zoo looked better last year than Frieze's (so if you're short of time, this will be a good bet). Exhibitors list is here.
Fri 17-Mon 20 Oct, 12-8pm (12-5pm on Mon), £12.
At the Royal Academy, 6 Burlington Gardens, W1S 3EX (the entrance will be from the Burlington Gardens side).
Nearest tube: Piccadilly Circus, Green Park.

Frieze
This is a monster of a show (you could spend a day here) and it gets super-crowded at the weekend so try go on Thursday or Friday. The exhibitors list is here, and the talk/projects programme here. The bookshop always has good deals. Rodcorp at previous at Friezes: 2004, 2005, 2006.
Thurs 16-Sun 19 Oct, 11am-7pm (11am-6pm on Sun), £20.
In Regent's Park, entrance from Outer Circle.
Nearest tube: Great Portland St, Regent's Park, Baker St.

Free Art Fair
Jasper Joffe and friends return with the art fair "where all the work is given away at the end".
Mon 13 - Sun 19 Oct, 11-6pm, free.
5, 8, and 16 Seymour Place, Portman Village, W1H

And there are a bunch of others, though I doubt I'll make it to them:

Scope
This year (at last), Scope's website has some useful details. Galleries showing. It's across the park from Frieze.
Fri 17-Sun 19 Oct, 11am-8pm (12am-6pm on Sun), £15.
At Lord's Cricket Ground, St John's Wood Road, NW8
Nearest tube: Baker Street, St John's Wood, Warwick Avenue, Marylebone.

New!: Kounter Kulture
A new fair in Brick Lane. The artist roster looks like it leans toward that slick, decorative, often figurative, gothic/urban/folksy school "sprouting from and largely influenced by visual subcultures".
Wed 15 - Sun 19 Oct, 11-6pm, free.
Truman Brewery - T3 and T4, 146 Brick Lane, London, E1 (Wilkes St entrance)

New!: The Future Can Wait
Also on at the Truman Brewery.
Wed 15 - Sun 19 Oct, 11-6pm, free.
The Old Truman Brewery, 81 Brick Lane, E1 6QL

Red Dot London

"Concurrent with Frieze Art Fair and Zoo Art Fair", Red Dot is another of the satellite fairs, and can't make up its mind whether it's free or £5.
Thu 16-Sun 19 Oct, 11am-8pm (11am-7pm on Sun), Free or £5, maybe.
Radisson Edwardian Grafton London, 130 Tottenham Court Road, W1T 5AY
Nearest tube: Warren Street.

Affordable Art Fair
Will Ramsey's fair tends to show "relatively unknown artists" and all work is under £3,000.
Thu 23-Sun 26 Oct, 11am-6pm, £10.
Battersea Park Events Arena, London SW11 4NJ.
Nearest tube: Sloane Square, where there are free shuttle buses, or you're on the train to Battersea Park, or on the bus.

Art Sleuth suggests that there may also be some action on Vyner Street, if Wilkinson, Nettie Horn et al haven't all gone quiet whilst Frieze is on.

Gone but not forgotten...

Year 08
The Keith Talent Gallery-organised show has been a strong youthful upstart for the last couple of years, but has been cancelled. What a shame. Last year: Year 07.

Pulse hasn't returned to London in 2008, and Bridge claims it is skipping 2008 only.

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See also: Alternative Art Fairs in London Art Week, All the fun of the art fairs, The beginning of the end for satellite fairs?,How to plan and run a successful art fair (by Matthew Slotover of Frieze), Art Fairs, Oct 2008, Last year.

Comments

[Phil Gyford]

You should do tours of some of them. Whenever I look at modern art these days I feel like a complete philistine because it means nothing to me. I know nothing about what any of the artists are trying to do and am so out of touch with the art scene generally that I can't even guess. Unless it "looks nice" I roll my eyes and walk on. I'd love to go with someone who knows something.

[rodcorp]

Since 1913-1917 - Duchamp's readymades - we've known that the question isn't "is it art?" but "is it good art?", though "good" remains tricky to pin down.

Some approach it in purely personal terms, in which case "Unless it 'looks nice' I roll my eyes and walk on" isn't a bad strategy at all (even though the art world's high-handedness has culturally trained the rest of us that a personal or personal/aesthetic response isn't quite sufficient). Other arbiters of value might include: the accurate capturing of a visual truth (though obviously photography does much of this work culturally now); the capturing of a deeper non-visual truth; the quality or impact of the ideas that the art work embodies; financial sums achieved in the art market itself; which galleries are representing the art; the winning of art prizes; the influence an artist might have on other artists; what the art press/criticism/historians are saying (and some are trying to quantify this, eg David Galenson or Komar & Melamid); etc... All of those are slightly tangled up in each other. And I know you know all of those already!

But beyond all that there are a couple of interesting things:

Firstly, there's the committed spectator: if you look at a *lot* of art, it becomes a lot clearer what's good and what isn't, and what's being attempted. There's a nice anecdote about this in Vonnegut's Bluebeard: "All you have to do is look at a million paintings".

Secondly, if you make art, it changes how you look at art. You start to see correspondances between what you're doing or want to do and what you're seeing. You start to see that some art is difficult to achieve. So that's the practitioner's view. (You'll perhaps have seen the same dynamic with acting?)

The other thing to note is that art fairs show a hell of a lot of work. This plenitude means that works that are visually arresting are privileged.

Duchamp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readymades_of_Marcel_Duchamp
Galenson: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/arts/design/04pica.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all and http://histoiremesure.revues.org/document900.html
Vonnegut: http://rodcorp.typepad.com/rodcorp/2006/07/all_you_have_to.html

[Phil Gyford]

Thanks Rod, interesting. The only exhibition I've been to recently was the ICA Auction exhibition... so much of it, for me, wasn't aesthetically pleasing and didn't look particularly technically challenging to produce. So I'm left with the knowledge that presumably the artist is trying to communicate or explore some idea, but I can very rarely guess with the remotest confidence what that might be. So I get bored and grumpy, feel stupid, and vow not to go to another exhibition for some time.

At the other end of the spectrum, I went to the Pompidou centre over the summer and loved the early twentieth century stuff. I'm not sure if this is because I've learned what they were trying to do, or because it's clearer what they were trying to do, or because they created "nicer looking" art, or because it's old and it's in the Pompidou and therefore it must be Good.

[Meaghan Fitzgerald]

I work with a London events listings website and we have an awesome arts editor who's going to be at (I think although I'm not quite sure how he's going to manage it time-wise) just about all of those fairs and will be twitter back from the events (http://twitter.com/spoonfed) which is nice for the rest of us in the office.

I'm really looking forward to checking out Frieze but I always feel so uncultured (like Phil said in his comment) when looking at most current art.

Gotta say, though, The Fountain didn't do it for me so I'm probably in the 'if it's not pretty I move on' category.