Announcement // Anticipating Art Projects at the London Art Fair

London Art Fair 2014 © James ChampionLondon Art Fair 2014, image courtesy of James Champion

As the year is coming to an end, the London Art Fair is coming together, with a recent announcement of 32 galleries and associated events that have been selected for Art Projects. Art Projects runs alongside the fair, providing an international platform for galleries to challenge conventions and experiment with art practice. Appearing for the first time in the London Art Fair are BREESE LITTLE, Division of Labour, Eastside Projects, Federico Bianchi Contemporary Art, Galerie Rothamel, Modern Art Oxford, PAPER, Slate Projects, and TinT Gallery. In addition to being a gallery platform, Art Projects is composed of many subsections with curators organizing a variety of collections and events, like the Art Projects Film Programme, Dialogues, and Thursday Late.

Art Projects Film Programme is partnered this year with LIMA, hailing from Amsterdam. LIMA is a collective involved in accumulating, managing, and distributing a large database of media art, dating from the 1960’s to the present. For Art Projects, LIMA has put together a program of recent works that consider the relationship of cinema – the dominant form of the moving image – to other forms of media art. Works will be shown in a specially designed screening room at Art Projects. A more detailed program will be announced in early December, on the Art Projects Film Programme website.

One artist will receive the Art Projects Artist Award, chosen by a jury of a diverse group of specialists from the art world – journalists, curators, educators, and the like. This award is organized by the Art Fair’s sponsor, Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

London Art Fair 2014 © James Champion (2)London Art Fair 2014, image courtesy of James Champion

Another much anticipated portion of Art Projects is Dialogues, a series of collaborative presentations between UK and international galleries, curated by Anna Colin. The five pairings are The International 3 (Manchester) with THE FLAT – MASSIMO CARASI (Milan), Space In Between (London) with grey area (Paris), Maria Stenfors (London) with 3+1 Arte Contemporânea (Lisbon), SYSON (Nottingham) with Laveronica arte contemporanea (Modica), and VITRINE (London) with p|m Gallery (Toronto).

Thursday Late will happen on Jan. 22: an intervention by Peroni Nastro Azzurro, who arranged for the art fair to stay open until 9 pm, allowing people to visit after work. There will be a variety of talks, tours, film screenings and performances throughout the evening, in addition to the art fair exhibition.

Performances by International 3 are highly recommended, for instance the collaboration between Henry/Bragg, who will stage a live, interactive bingo game, to explore the ritual and practice of community building through bingo, or the performance by Maeve Rendle, in which she uses novel-reading to explore the relationship between free thought and literal reading.

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Blog entry by Alena Sokhan in Berlin; Tuesday, Dec. 09, 2014.