Affordable Art Fair
Curator Susan Oman
The first Affordable Art Fair took place in Battersea Park, London at the end of the 90s. It opened to a burgeoning contemporary art scene, with each year seeing the birth of a new international biennale, and many cities opening new museums (or expanding old ones). Notably in the UK, the opening of Tate Modern formally established what had been a general growth in public awareness of contemporary art, thanks to the British press and their avid reports on "Y.B.A.s" (young British artists), such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. The Affordable Art Fair was conceived in order to encourage a nubile audience now familiar with contemporary art to feel more comfortable around it, and by extension to encourage the possibilities of purchasing and collecting contemporary art.
The Recent Graduates’ Exhibition, a uniquely curated exhibition within the Affordable Art Fair, was devised to further develop and educate this newly cultivated audience (now in excess of 20,000 visitors bi-annually) through the introduction of new media and installation as well as more traditional approaches to making artworks, as offered by the cream of the UK’s art schools. This exhibition also served to provide a more involved discourse for the experienced audience that the rest of the fair may not provide for.
In addition to the educational aspects of this specially curated exhibition, it is also clear that the art graduate does not receive sufficient exposure, advice or avenues in which to pursue their career outside the realm of further education. The Exhibition thus provides a forum for graduates to showcase their work to a large audience that far exceeds their previous exhibition experiences, and will include gallerists, dealers and collectors.
Last year’s exhibition was the most successful yet, with many of the participating artists who had never sold work before, selling all that was displayed. One of the exhibition’s purchasers, who had never so much as bought a poster, unwittingly aligned himself with British über collector Charles Saatchi, by purchasing the work of 24 year-old graduate Jodie Carey.
Carey’s freestanding "flower arrangements" are constructed from individual petals which have been painstakingly cut from mainstream conservative newspaper, and favourite of the middle classes, The Daily Mail. Each petal is then individually stained with blood and English tea before being arranged into these funereal sculptures. The sculptures are representative of Middle England’s preoccupation with keeping up appearances: their meticulously constructed nature presents a magnificent façade, indulging in their own artifice and ostentation.
Also on offer for the first time in 2005, was a specially commissioned performance piece. Using Battersea Park (where the event is held) as his starting point, Tom G. Adriani wrote a candid poem whose wistful charm appealed to child and adult daydreamers alike. He also illustrated his text with a sequence of images that drew heavily on the Victorian Gothic elements in the park, which served as a welcome reminder of when the park was built and of the people who would have first walked its paths. These illustrations were animated and proved a fitting backdrop for the performances, set and music involving members of the National Theatre. This reflection on the history of storytelling within the History of Art as a didactic tool to communicate social issues was delivered engagingly and to a wide audience.
One of the most notable successes of previous years is Damien Roach. A Royal College of Art graduate and exhibitor of the Affordable Art Fair in 2003, Damien has since exhibited in collaboration with the Centre of Attention in the Arsenale at Venice Biennale, 2005, at Tate Britain (the first London Tate), and was also in a group show last year with the likes of Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns at London’s Timothy Taylor gallery.
The blossoming careers of a number of the participating artists establishes the importance of the exhibition as a preview of tomorrow’s rising stars, and by extension, qualifies an artwork to a tentative investor. With each year, more work is sold, and more visitors express an active interest in upcoming exhibitions featuring the participating artists. This runs alongside an increasingly ambitious exhibition programme and its demonstrations of new media. The success and expansion of the exhibition’s framework is encouragingly symptomatic of a larger contemporary art audience, and reaffirms the educational purpose of the Recent Graduates’ Exhibition in the approachable environment generated by the Affordable Art Fair. An audience, who a decade ago would have been intimidated by contemporary art and especially notions of performance, video or installation as artforms, have interacted with these media with ease, and without the accessibility of the works chosen dominating this exchange.
