Community Think Tank

An art fair is a commercial exhibition within a week gathering various art galleries worldwide, usually display modern and latest contemporary artworks, now simultaneously have been becoming the most powerful business platform for galleries to connect face to face to the world.

 

With the globalisation of art market, the contemporary art scene grows bigger and more international with each passing year, new global art fairs seems to pop up every season. According to the Art Newspapers’s art event calendar in 2015, lists 269 fairs which are dramatically up from a handful 15 years ago[1]. In the same year, the New York Times even marked this phenomena as the tendency of ”Art Fair Fatigue”[2]. However, the expansion of the top art fairs such as Frieze and Art Basel continuously enhance their influence all over the world. In particular, a prestigious art fair, Frieze London, serves as an instrumental case study for developing a systematic understanding of art fairs in terms of valuing and branding contemporary art. 

 

Nowadays, the art fairs has transformed from a trade show into a platform where all aspects of people in art industry keep coming back and become the core business structure of contemporary art world. The business model of art gallery especially contemporary art gallery has experience tremendous changes in the past generation. The art market has witnessed a revolution driven by the proliferation of art fairs, but is it positive for the industry?

 

Thus, this research project aims to analyse the proliferation of global art fairs in the process of changing art galleries and try to collect the new modes of promoting strategies which conducted by art galleries and art organisations in order to against this trend and look for new possibilities of art industry. What is behind their rapid international proliferation? How do the galleries especially the middle galleries react to this huge change? How do galleries find a new way to survive? The global art fairs as a platform for selling art works have a great influence on galleries industries. Furthermore, by analysing the phenomenon of art fairs, this research project encourages art galleries to question the logic of current business mode of art fairs and rethink capability of their spaces.

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• Gallery space and art fair space

 

Art galleries contained various types of spaces with different operating business mode shaping the art landscape in the city. Galleries in London could be a good example of forming the unique art district, as top contemporary art galleries with tall ceilings, huge floor-to-ceiling windows, and spacious pure white spaces can be found in Mayfair which is considered an affluent area in west London. The master pieces or the top artists’ works can be seen stability displayed in white cubical spaces providing tranquil and museum-like atmosphere for visitors. Meanwhile, instead of creating cold and clean white spaces, some gallery spaces in Peckham and Bethnal Green in east London possess a very different atmosphere by adapting the original old building or warehouse interior with heterogeneous and lively feeling present more experimental, rough, flexible art projects and sometimes provide a stage for young artists.

 

The gallery spaces played an important role to comprehensively present artist’s ideas and works. However, they are considerably diminished when they participate in commercial art fairs. Take Art Basel Hong Kong in March this year as an example; there are about 248 galleries from all over the world exhibiting[3]. The linear logic of art fair space design produce homogenised experiences where the same exhibitors present the same artists to the same buyers. When hundreds of art galleries juxtaposed at the same platform of fairs displaying art works in limited, tedious square booths as products on showcase in supermarkets exactly homogenised themselves.[4] Thus, with this, the strategies of presenting art for efficient transaction art fairs, the truth is that the distinction of each art galleries has disappeared.

 

In order to maintain gallery’s reputation and social connection, the necessity of partaking art fairs requires continuous investing huge amount of money within a short time which accumulates financial pressure gradually on galleries especially in the middle market. For those middle or small galleries without strong financial support to promote themselves, it is more difficult to become outstanding in this homogeneous platform. The mode of art fair transform art gallery into same format to join this game. Moreover, globalisation has come to the art market and the art gallery are being forced out of their comfortable gallery spaces and travelling on a carousel of art fairs from Basel to Hong Kong to London to Shanghai. Rather than sitting in the galley in Saturday afternoon waiting for collectors, art galleries now bring the art to collectors actively. Everything happened in art fairs are compressed in the business category of effectiveness, benefit and tight schedule whereas the spectrum and the possibility of art are narrowed.

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