The London Art Fair

The London Art Fair has been running at Angel’s Business Design Centre since 1989 and this year features over 120 dealers with works from over 1,000 modern and contemporary artists, so there is plenty for its 25,000 visitors to see.

Each year, the fair partners with a regional museum to bring some of its catalogue into London. This year’s museum partner is Charleston in Lewes, the modernist home of painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, which hosted the Bloomsbury set. It has a stand at the front of the fair that evokes the exciting and playful feel of the original home and where visitors can enjoy a selection of its works. There is a portrait of EM Forster by Roger Fry that feels characterful and present. There is an intimate and rare portrait of Virginia Woolf, who did not like sitting for them and considered it a waste of her time, by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Many of this year’s highlights are sculptures and ceramics by female artists. One of the most striking pieces is a glazed earthenware figure, Man of Sorrow (2022,) by Carolein Smit, a hunched figure wearing a crown of thorns and obscured by iridescent drips. It’s enigmatic and a little disturbing. Another ceramic highlight is Ying Zheng’s Purity of True Feeling (2023), a large vase dripping with pastel-coloured globules pushing through its neutral body. It feels fresh and has pleasing movement. Carol Peace’s Place I edition 12/25 features a miniature cast bronze couple in an iron resin circle, mixing the figurative with the abstract to create a microcosm in metal.

East London’s Jealous Gallery features prints by David Shrigley with his usual playful, childlike style. Jake Chapman’s Flame Thrower sequence are colourfully apocalyptic prints of a skeleton with a flamethrower printed on satin and hand-finished with watercolour.

There are trends that appear throughout the show, such as modernist sculptures in the classical material of Carrara marble; butterflies (as seen in Damien Hirst’s gothic depictions of them in kaleidoscopic resin) and a predilection for the bright and colourful.

Jessica Wall
Image: Mark Cocksedge

The London Art Fair is at from 17^th January until 20^th January 2024. For further information visit the exhibition’s website here.