Every October, the world’s art market arrives in London. Collectors fly in, international galleries take over Regent’s Park, and for a week the city feels like the centre of everything. But what makes London matter isn’t what arrives for a week: it’s who stays all year.
The UK is the world’s second-largest art market. London’s galleries connect it to artists and collectors across the globe, and its museums, many of them free, put extraordinary collections within everyone’s reach. Together with our art schools, small exhibition spaces and independent organisations, they help make this a city where artists can find their peers, test an idea and build a career.
I know how much those encounters matter. When I first came to work in London, the conversations I had with artists and curators shaped my understanding of art as much as anything I had studied. That sense of community, of learning from people with different perspectives, is still what excites me about the city. You can see it in the artists in this issue. George Rouy came from Sittingbourne to study at Camberwell College of Art in 2012; his canvases of contorted, ambiguous bodies are now shown by Hauser & Wirth. Alex Margo Arden began working with her gallerist, Freddie Powell, when Ginny on Frederick was still a curatorial project in a sandwich shop. Last year, that partnership brought her to Frieze London’s Focus section with an installation of decommissioned mannequins from the National Motor Museum. It won the inaugural Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Prize, and her work is now on view at the Foundation in Chelsea until January.
Eva Langret
Press handout
Okiki Akinfe and Hettie Inniss were both born in London in 1999, studied at the Royal College of Art and are building their careers in the city. Akinfe’s paintings bring humour and imagination to questions of identity and representation. Inniss explores how memory lives in the senses: how a smell, a sound or a change in light can return us to another time and place. Rene Matić came to Central Saint Martins and, five years after graduating, was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for work exploring identity, intimacy and belonging. Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings studied at Goldsmiths and have spent more than a decade examining the histories and politics of queer life through drawing, film and fresco painting. Marcus Jefferson draws on his upbringing in north-west London, transforming everyday materials to explore class, race and cultural identity. Ella Fleck uses scent, sound and installation to investigate desire and the ways technology shapes our behaviour.
What interests me is how differently these artists help us understand the world we share. There is no single London style. The city’s strength lies in the meeting of different histories, cultures and ways of thinking.
Everyone who benefits from London’s art scene has a part to play
That freedom needs practical support. A studio you can afford. Time to develop your work. A gallery willing to take a chance before anyone knows your name. London still offers those possibilities, but rising costs and the expense of art education make them harder to access. Everyone who benefits from London’s art scene has a part to play. Frieze brings international collectors and curators into contact with that year-round scene, helping artists and galleries build relationships that extend far beyond the week itself. We put Focus, our section for galleries operating for 12 years or fewer, at the entrance because discovery should be at the heart of what we do. We connect artists and galleries with public collections: Alex Margo Arden’s prize-winning installation is now in the Arts Council Collection, while the Contemporary Art Society’s Collections Fund at Frieze celebrates ten years of acquiring work for museums from Middlesbrough to Plymouth.
For one week, London’s artists have the world’s attention.
Let’s carry some of that curiosity and commitment into the rest of the year: visit their exhibitions, support the spaces that take a chance on them, and help keep London a city where they can build a life.