A fair account

The Art Newspaper has just published a long report on art fair biz over the ten years 2005-2015. And guess what? Yep, it’s a growth industry. Close to home, the number of Asia Pacific fairs have jumped 86 percent to a total of 21, admittedly from a smaller base but it is an indicator and it’s roaring compared to 47 percent growth over the same period in the US. But when it comes to collectors apparently the West still rules with American and European fairs being the favourites. When it came to picking the top 40, just on 80 percent were from the US (11) and Europe (21). That means collectors give just two art fairs below the equator the big tick. No, not you Australia or you Auckland. Meanwhile the fastest growing art cities are cited as Tokyo, Mexico City, Istanbul, Seoul, Singapore and Shanghai. Here’s hoping the spread of the 2026 report is going to be somewhat different.

And how much do these art fairs cost? The average price for a booth is just under $1,000 per m2 with the most expensive being just over $2,000. And how many art fairs are there? At the end of the report there’s a list of all the art fairs slated for 2016-2017. There are 320 of them. You can read the full report here

Cartoon: The brilliant Pablo Helguera

My big fat art fair

Funnier than a sitcom and with more twists and turns than a soap opera, art fairs in Australia deserve their own reality show. As Sydney Contemporary aka 'Australasia's International Art Fair' opens, the company that runs it and the Melbourne Art Fair Single Market Events has just announced it will no longer be involved with the city down South. That didn’t last long. Single Market Events only managed one outing in Melbourne and that was last year. Melbourne Art Fair chairwoman and gallery owner Anna Pappas told reporters, 'We found our objectives were different.' Whoops that meant breaking a 20-year contract with Single Market Events with only one year on the clock. 

So now SME really needs to deliver a big success with Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks in Redfern this year. Creative NZ certainly believes in them shelling out $117,000 to get nine NZ dealer galleries into Sydney Contemporary booths. 

Across town in the CBD a bunch of NZ galleries (Hamish McKay, Michael Lett, Robert Heald, Ivan Anthony and Hopkinson Mossman) have opted to show in the breakaway fair Spring 1883 at the Establishment (#deeplyironicname) Hotel. They get to hot-bed in their ‘galleries’ keeping costs down while at Carriageworks booths go from $10,000 to $50,000 a pop plus shipping etc. Even on 50 percent commission you’re talking around $100,000 worth of sales to go home smiling. 

But win or lose, the cocktail specially designed by artist Fiona Lowry for Sydney Art Week will offer comfort. The Pink Frost involves Hendrick's gin, blood orange liqueur, rose water and (the art bit) an orchid sealed in an over-sized ice cube. Cheers

Not fair

As many of you'll know, the Auckland Art Fair has been taken over by the event management company North Port Events. The person who up to now has been the face of the Fair, Jennifer Buckley, is no longer involved which is obviously a loss. 

But strangely Buckley has made a very odd appearance in the publicity material for next year's Fair. At the top of promotional material including a email newsletter is a photo of Buckley in one of the last fair’s less primo moments. A visitor has broken a porcelain sculpture by Australian artist Penny Byrne and you can see Buckley holding the broken work moments after the accident occurred. An unusual way to front a publicity drive and demonstrates a problem with taking over such specialist events, that is, the lack of intimate knowledge needed to…well…not make this sort of mistake. You can guarantee this is not the photo Jennifer Buckley would have selected from the bunch. 

The new owners have also announced the five-member panel to select dealer galleries for inclusion. They are all well known. Hamish Keith (Auckland commentator), Michael Lett (gallerist), Dayle Mace (patron), Justin Paton (Head of International Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales) and Simon Rees (director of the Govett-Brewster). You can see here what you get for your money if you're thinking about a stand (they cost between $8,000 and $12,000).

Image: left, the image heading the Art Fair newsletter and prospectus and right, Jennifer Buckley with the Penny Byrne sculpture. (Thanks A and thanks to you too G)

Dot matrix

Sometimes ideas can careen off in very different ways depending on the artist. Campbell Patterson’s painting was made the hard way. He decided to paint the hundreds of white painted circles by hand as accurately as possible. The job took months and the painting was appropriately tiled Punishment.  At Gavin Brown’s booth at Frieze NY last week the American artist Jonathan Horowitz took another direction. He enlisted anyone willing to paint his circles and what’s more he paid them $20 each to do so. In Horowitz's case we know exactly how many circles he set out to achieve: 700. Patterson got to 990 (not that anyone is counting). The scale and impact were as different as the intention. Public performance or private penance – take your pick.
Images: top, Jonathan Horowitz 700 dots and bottom Campbell Patterson Punishment

Trending

Jessica Johnson visited Art Basel Miami and made this list of current art trends.

- inkjet prints on canvas using imagery sourced from the web
- decorative fabrics wrapped around stretcher bars and presented as paintings
- rainbow gradients
- compounds poured on canvas with airbrushed shadow effects
- simplistic emoticon imagery (palm trees, rainbows, clouds, smiley faces, etc)
- clumpy ceramics with sloppy glazes
- exposed stretcher bars
- dirt as a medium on canvas
- framed photographs without glass
- process abstraction
- metal as a surface for painting, screen prints, etc

What was absent;

- video art
- neons
- work with any political content (or any content that wasn't about process and/or materials)

Grunt work

“If you want to sell your work, you have to take your pig to the market. And if you want to make more work, you have to sell your pig.”

British artist Ryan Gander talks to the Guardian about selling work at the Basel Art Fair

Collective

How interesting is it to get a look inside the homes of art collectors? #rhetoricalquestion For a start it's a chance to see art, possibly for the first time, outside the context of the good old neutral white space that's still endorsed almost unanimously by both art dealers and art museums. We're talking Space Odyssey rather than home-sweet-home. Occasionally public art museums have a swing at re-creating the domestic art experience but it's always awkward. The Auckland Art Gallery made an effort once with a patrons' exhibition (Present Company: Works Presented by the Patrons) but the result was an uneasy hybrid.

At this year’s Frieze art fair in London one gallerist (the HellyNahmad Gallery) has jumped the shark and created a set of rooms (living room and study) supposedly owned by a fictitious collector of the pack-rat archivist variety and set in Paris, 1968. According to Art Market Monitor it's “a statement against art as an asset” so who knows which planet they're living on. Still, it's a nice idea and one that has been done before by at least one artist (Elmgreen & Dragset, Death of a Collector, 2009). So now that we have dealers who clearly feel they can also make art. Oh well, there's another old and respected division of labour all shot to hell.

Images: the  HellyNahmad Gallery's installation at Freize

Fair game

The American artist Chuck Close once famously observed that artists attending art fairs was “like giving a cow a guided tour of an abattoir.” That might be so but art fairs are really for collectors and they have become the go-to entertainment of the art world. It’s estimated that there are over 400 of them worldwide. Close to home the Melbourne Art Fair is about to launch itself for the sixth time tomorrow.

Not surprisingly 86 percent of the 70 galleries included are from Australia and of the 10 visitors just four (Paulnache, Sanderson Contemporary Art, Starkwhite and Suite) are from New Zealand. This low turnout can be put down to the launch of Spring 1883. This rival art fair can claim 65 percent of its 20 exhibitors from Australia and five galleries from NZ (Gloria Knight, Hamish McKay, Hopkinson Mossman, Michael Lett and Robert Heald). It has also snagged big name Australian dealers Rosylyn Oxley9 Gallery (in fact Oxley appears to be showing at both fairs), Darren Knight, Sarah Cottier and Utopian Slumps and from the US, Foxy Productions. When galleries of this caliber all have the confidence to choose the upstart alternative, the Melbourne Art Fair probably should be doing some soul searching.

It could start with its attitude to collectors. For the first Melbourne Art Fair in 2004 a number of collectors were flown in (including Don and Mira Rubell from Miami), accommodated and generally fussed over. This is common practice for most of the big art fairs. At the very least they have long VIP lists that get serious collectors into the fair free and see them plied with enough gifts and drinks to loosen them up for some serious purchasing. But collectors who received the Melbourne Art Fair pack know it’s pay-as-you-go. Front up with $275 for a Collector Pass to let you in to buy art from the galleries you buy art from all the time. Still it also includes tickets for the opening night so at least you can get first dibs on the art from the galleries you buy art from all the time. That’s if you haven’t organized that already before the fair starts.

Fair go

They’re at it again. Following up on their breakaway art fair a couple of years ago a group of Australian dealers are back with another one. The poor old Melbourne Art Fair must rue the day it went mainstream and allowed this sort of thing to happen. This time the Art Fair you can go to when you’re not going to the other art fair is called SPRING 1883 (14-17 August). There’s a taste of what they’re up to from the list of NZ galleries that have signed up for the ride - Gloria Knight, Hamish McKay, Hopkinson Mossman, Michael Lett and Robert Heald. The dealers behind SPRING 1883 are Vasili Kaliman (Station), Geoff Newton (Neon Park) and Vikki McInnes (Sarah Scout Presents). Kaliman and Newton are also well-known in the NZ art scene from their participation at the Auckland Art Fair and a close relationship with NZ artists.

SPRING 1883 will be held in the historic surroundings of the Windsor Hotel. This grand nineteenth century building was where the Australian constitution was drafted and was known for many years as the Duchess of Spring Street. The art fair’s name SPRING 1883 is said to refer to the Windsor Hotel’s opening date (no it’s not the address) although most sources give the rebuild of the Grand and its reopening as the Windsor as 1884. But given that at least one of the team of three is a known trickster maybe there is more to the art fair name and that date than meets the eye.

Fair enough

“The fastest collector to run to your booth is not always the best collector”
Art dealer, Emmanuel Perrotin in the Art Newspaper

... and on the table

From the stream.(thanks to you all)

The shining

“There should be an international moratorium on art made with mirrors, Mylar, aerosol paint, and virtually any ‘found objects’ no matter how esoteric.”
New Jersey-based art adviser Clayton Press quoted in the WSJ

Down under

For the first time in many years no dealer galleries from either Australia or New Zealand have been selected for inclusion in Art Basel Basel in Basel. Indeed there will be only seven galleries from the entire Southern Hemisphere making up a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you 2.3 percent. We did hear that Hopkinson Mossman might do their bit and make it into Liste (They have since been accepted and will show Oscar Enberg), the young art fair in Basel again. Here's hoping. You can see the full list here.

Fair dealing

Here’s a riddle doing the rounds: “When is the Melbourne Art Fair not the Melbourne Art Fair?” The answer? “When it’s the Sydney Art Fair (aka Sydney Contemporary 13)." And that, after a big burst of start-up publicity linking Sydney with the Hong Kong and Basel Art Fairs, does seem to be where we've ended up.

Since it was first announced the Sydney Art Fair has had a change of venue and been delayed a few months but it now kicks off on Thursday. Those who imagined reaping the benefits of a competitive Melbourne/ Sydney tussle can settle down. The company that owns the Sydney Fair (Art Fairs Australia Pty Ltd founded by Tim Etchells) will now also be running the Melbourne event and hoping to turn it around. Last year the Melbourne Art Fair saw attendances dip 10 percent to 27,000 and, probably more alarmingly, sales drop from $12.5 million in 2010 to $10.2 million.

Despite Sydney's booth prices coming in 25 percent higher than last year in Melbourne, Tim Etchells told the Australian Financial Review Sydney Contemporary is only “anticipating an audience of up to 18,000” and, by the sound of the lavish number of VIP allowances offered to participating galleries, around 2,500 of them will be varying orders of VIPs. No surprise then that ‘Pampering VIPs’ was listed as a significant budget line in the AFA story. So expect a lot of pampering. In contrast the Basel Art Fair restricts VIP cards to just 10 per gallery.

The Sydney Contemporary venue is Carriageworks which will be familiar to visitors to the Anna Schwartz Gallery. In fact her Gallery will sit between the two Art Fair spaces prompting one wit to suggest she rename it ‘Main Entrance’.

Image: VIP card for Sydney Contemporary 13

Priceless

One change we’ve seen creeping into the dealer system in NZ is price lists without prices. In big city galleries in the US and the UK it would not only be most unusual to find the prices displayed but you'd be bloody lucky to get one of the assistants (assuming you could get them to talk to you at all) to tell you any prices at all unless you were ‘known to the gallery.’

This is one of the reasons of course why art fairs have become so popular internationally. Collectors and particularly the art interested public (who previously had no chance of knowing what cost what) can now see the price of almost anything thanks to the unashamed competitive commercialism of the art fair culture.

In New Zealand transparency of pricing, in the primary dealer market anyway, has been the rule rather than the exception. Those sheets on the wall or in plastic folders almost always included the prices although of course deals have always been commonplace and serious collectors, like major buyers anywhere in the world, expect to be able to negotiate a bit of a haircut on the sticker price. But international practice may be taking hold here. Increasingly the prices don't seem to be easily available. From what we can see the Commerce Commission allows that “businesses are not obliged to display prices” but does encourage “businesses to price goods clearly.” Go figure...if you can find them.

Not fair

“What we are dealing with now is destination shopping. We bring the art to the collector rather than bringing the collector to the art. Fairs are beneath the dignity of art. To stand there in a booth and hawk your wares — it is just not how you sell art.”
New York art dealer Arne Glimcher, of the Pace Gallery berating art fairs in the NYT.

Big Ears

We can’t make the Auckland Art Fair this year but we’re figuring things will be much as usual so here's the very best of Big Ears past.

"For someone who doesn't have one I guess it's ok."

“There’s a general problem with his art, that people don’t get it.”

"It's a reindeer and a towel. Everyone's excited."

“I said it was eight thousand bucks and he offered seven, so I told him ‘we’re not having this conversation.’”

“It was all fine until we had to deal with the artist.”

“He won’t be told, but he’s easily led.”

“Oh sure, he’s got lots of money, but can he make up his mind?”

“I’m just going to go over there and pat the dog.”

“I did like it. I liked it a lot, but in the end the paint was too thick.”

From the stream

Art critic Anthony Byrt gets a hard time from an impatient Auckland Art Fair

Rat king

Left the Union scab rat brought out to protest non-union labour being used at the Frieze Art Fair and right a 3.5 meter bronze 'art' version created by the Bruce High Quality Foundation ("a learning experiment where artists work together to manifest creative, productive, resistant, useless, and demanding interactions between art and the world") that sits without any visible irony in the foyer of Lever House.

Big Ears

An ear to the ground at the Frieze Art Fair:

“You talk to them, they’ll talk to George and George, can get back to us via Gina. Then maybe we can do something.”

“All I can say is whatever you think of his collection it certainly works in dollar terms.”

Collector: “I’ve got one of those but I think it is a different size.”

Dealer: “Yes they do come in different sizes.”

Collector: “I don’t like that.”

A: “There aren’t any labels, so how do you know who did what?”

B: “If you don’t know who they’re by you can’t afford them.”

A: “Love your trousers.”

B: “Thank you, they’re green.”

A: “I noticed.”

A: “That guy is totally of the moment.”

B: “Who is he?”

A: “Can’t remember.”

A: “Is it just me or are things getting smaller and smaller and costing more and more?”

B: “Mostly you I think.”

A: “Well at least we’re not screwing anyone over and that’s a good thing. Right?”

B: (uncomfortable silence)

Collector: “I do so love Struth.”

Dealer: “Actually this one is by Wolfgang Tillmans.”

Collector: “Oh, I’m not so sure about Tillmans.”

Collector on the phone: “Where are you? Oh. Have you seen anything… me? …no… it’s all either too big or too blue.”