The London Art Fair 2025 reveals every aspect of the art world’s precarious global economy whilst remaining relevant to its local market.
Paul Carter Robinson and the artist Andy Holden are comparing scarves, both stripey, one from Paul Smith and the other Missoni. “I got this one in a charity shop,” Holden says, “so I am never quite sure if it is real.” “Oh, it’s real,” says Robinson, holding the fine fabric between his fingertips, “you can feel the quality.” Behind him, Robert Sandelson from Narborough has a group of industry professionals enraptured, despite losing his voice, with the best anti-sell on a painting I have ever heard at a fair. Most likely, this historic, monumental work ‘Whan That Aprille’ (1984) by Gillian Ayers, from her “best period in the 80s” has now sold.
“Do you see this?” he says, sweeping his hands across a section on the top left, “black mould! And here – look there is a chunk missing. That’s the problem with an impasto painting of this size (288 x 288 cm), apart from the fact that you cannot save it from the flood (is this a biblical or climate change reference?), it is hugely vulnerable to accidents.”
The piece is sensational, a true showstopper more likely to be found at Masterpiece (well, back in the day). However, its vibrant, exuberant tones have faded, and a rivulet of cracks has formed at its centre (did it fold?). Whilst perfect for an institution or mansion, it desperately needs restoration. Only now, that overlooked artists like Ayers are being acknowledged, is someone willing to purchase with this in mind. On the way to our next stop, I notice yet another Bridget Riley in pole position at Osborne Samuel. Still making work at 93, she is beyond national treasure status.
I am in this booth with AWITA, taking them on a mad dash of my fair highlights, and we have come to this piece specifically for how it speaks to the first works we saw in the VIP lounge by Ingram Prize nominees Rose Electra Harris and Hester Finch. Both showcased significant works that spring from a brave shift in their respective practice. What struck me about their fresh, large-scale paintings was how they succeeded in dialling up the magic and mystery whilst holding very different perspectives (that belies very different lived experiences). Listening to them in conversation with Ingram Collection director Jo Baring, I was reminded how strange it can be for artists to talk about their work for an audience. Made in the pre-verbal, intuitive and often unspeakable process of form creation, when we resonate with a work of art, it is often instinctive or inexplicable. Harris’s paintings really got me going with their exuberant singing tones – they made me want to dance – and seemed to express something liberated, elegantly in dialogue with the monumental work of Gillian Ayres.
Everything we see informs what we notice next, and nowhere is this experience more intense than in an art fair – where looking for the familiar is a trap every writer must avoid if they want to discover new gems. For this, I stopped into the Dublin-based Molesworth Gallery in the Encounters section, drawn in by the work of Sean Molloy. Antique in tone and intimate in scale, they catch you off guard with the flick of fluorescence – that appears like a glitch. Unbeknown to me, the artist was present and stood up as I was saying, “They look like they might be found objects and restored or intervened in this era”. “I like that, though in fact I painted the whole thing,’ said Molloy. In ‘Family Album’, a tiny white figure lies prostrate by a translucent horse, opposite two sparing figures, naked and marbled in tone. These diminutive vignettes take place in front of a darkling line of cypress trees and a moody sky, redolent of a Baroque painting. Meanwhile, a fine line of fluorescent orange, placed on the golden mean, confounds our reading of the work. So good!
Around the corner was a show-stopping solo booth of Antonio Sergio Moreira’s curated by Paris-based Ricardo Fernandes Gallery, which might have been titled “heavy subjects explored lightly” for how joyously Moreira incorporates vibrant colours and everyday materials into his work whilst exploring the fractured, inexhaustible subject of diaspora, from The Continent, through the subject of his mother. A testament to the value of curation, this set us on course for the Platform section, showcasing eight galleries (@sohorevue @metamorphikastudio @99projects @ione&mann @julianpage @artincept @virginiadamsta @izena @brusheswithgreatness chosen by Becca Pelly-Fry, under banner of reciprocity and the title “Today for you, tomorrow for me”. This section deserves a more prominent position next year!
While discovering a delicate set of works on paper by Viswanath Kuttum at Art Incept, a collector walked in and bought the whole lot! At Izena, who also won Best Stand this year, I was transfixed by delicate, biomorphic sculptures. Made by London-based sculptor Luke Hamel Cooke, Stella explained, ‘he uses experimental techniques to emulate fertility, abundance and physis — the principle of growth or change in nature.’ His work really got me thinking: biomorphic in aspect and futuristic- as if drawn from plants adapted to another climate.
Their purity of form keys us into Aristocratic ideas of physis: that nature contains its own source of matter (material), power/motion (efficiency), form, and end (final). Relevant to these sculptures, is how his definition of “physis” (nature) is dependent on techne (art). “The critical distinction between art and nature concerns their different efficient causes: nature is its own source of motion, whereas techne always requires a source of motion outside itself.” In other words, there is more than one way to interpret nature.
Interesting, then, to consider if/how Hamel Cooke’s chosen material might lead him towards certain forms: “A year ago, he was walking through some woods in north Oxfordshire looking for clay near a small stream, the stream yielded nothing, however nearby a large tree had fallen, and the roots of the tree had pulled a band of bluish grey clay above the topsoil. After a trip to the Natural History Museum in Oxford, he discovered that it was Oxford clay, which is a highly fossiliferous clay formed in the mid-late Jurassic period around 158 million years ago when the area was a shallow sea.” Little wonder they acted so profoundly on my psyche, forever drawn to the sea, even in a forest, by the roots of a tree.
I then fell hard for a painting showing with The Tagli, by @lottie.stoddart, showing with @zachzono (so in tune with @thefinchproject_ ) and a lovely counterpoint to the sepia-toned trompe l’oeil works of @johnrobinsonpainter at the wonderful @amodestshow
This is a painting so wondrously cheeky in both concept and execution that we think we are looking into a box of cardboard cutouts or maquette for the theatre. And yet, Lottie Stoddart has painted this trompe-l’œil in acrylic onto the flat surface of a canvas about the size of a window, which we cannot look through. Instead, we stay there, completely transfixed with so many questions. Why has a floating cloud picked up the tone from a cute little leafy tree? Is that a sheep naively grazing under the trumpeting figure of an arc angel? And the mauve, shadowy and light, creating so much depth. It’s unforgettable
I was fortunate to meet @thetagli team – a gallery that takes its name THE TAGLI (‘the cuts’) from the iconic slices of the canvas in the works of artist Lucio Fontana. No cuts here, but the painting did stem from an actual maquette (that the artist holds in her studio), with each component chosen as specifically as the word choice in a verse of free-form poetry. She is giving us clues, to decode this illusion, and keep us focused.
Our eyes wander around the illusion of three-dimensional space, scanning for clues of how she recesses each object on a two-dimensional surface. We try to make a narrative with what we see, and a little theatre emerges in our minds. We are enchanted.
Typically, a maquette is a small-scale model of a larger work of art – a rough draft that helps artists and designers visualize their ideas before committing to a full-scale project, but this is a magnification of the sketch, and it elegantly responds to Fontana’s hope, “I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space, create a new dimension.” Lucio Fontana
Following the echo of a shape, full fecund and orbital, I fell into the work of @catherineanholt showing @tin.man.art and next in ‘little fires’ with Katie Heller @paulsmithart. Anholt says, “l have always tried to capture fleeting times of pain and joy and produce work that will speak to people in a subliminal way and allow viewers to feel any emotions that the images conjure up.” Generous in tones, there is great beauty in her harmonious palette, in which all forms of physis – grown and handmade – sing together. We sense we are looking at a beautiful corner of life’s great tapestry, and I was reminded of Mary Oliver ‘Still, what I want in my life/
is to be willing/ to be dazzled—/ to cast aside the weight of facts…”
This brings us to a work I feel lucky to have seen at Willoughby Gerrish by the late Henry Moore, @willoughbygerrish. I returned to see it three times; I have never seen anything like it. Freshly restrung with historic yellow thread by the Henry Moore Foundation, it was almost unbelievable that this 1960 work is available on the market – that an individual could own it seems almost ridiculous (but that is for another article). Shown inside a clear perspex box, it perfectly illustrated the idea of art as a living thing, as expressed by the London Art Fair’s museum partner, The Sainsbury Centre. Unforgettable.
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