London’s oldest art fair celebrates its 40th anniversary – The Art Newspaper

In June 1985, a group of 16 print dealers hung their wares on the walls of the old Diploma Galleries in the Royal Academy of Art for the very first London Original Print Fair (LOPF), now the city’s longest running art fair. “I remember standing at the door and wondering if anyone would come,” says Gordon Cooke, the fair’s chairman and founder, in a video to mark its 40th anniversary this year.

Helen Rosslyn, formerly a print specialist at Christie’s, took on directing LOPF in 1987 when the first director moved back to New York. “When I had my first child, I wanted to go back to Christie’s but they said I couldn’t go back part time,” Rosslyn tells The Art Newspaper. “So, the timing just coincided”. Back then, she remembers, dealers, mostly Old Master specialists, would be given packed lunches, and a glass of champagne at 5pm, and the whole thing had the informal feel of Portobello Road, “everybody hanging things everywhere”.

In the 1980s, there were very few fairs at all. Now there are hundreds, and this year LOPF runs from 20-23 March (preview 19 March) at Somerset House, only one week before the IFPDA Print Fair in New York, which used to run in November but has now moved to 27-30 March. “Now it’s hard to find a time when half of your exhibitors don’t say ‘that date clashes with this fair’—it’s a much more crowded market,” Rosslyn says.

LOPF moved from the Royal Academy of Art to Somerset House in 2021 due to changes in the RA’s exhibition schedule following Covid-19 lockdowns. The fair used to be predominantly Old Master prints, but, as with the wider art market, contemporary works have become increasingly prevalent. “We’re a barometer [of the wider market] without meaning to be, because as a lot of the older dealers decided to retire, not nearly so many younger Old Master—or even Modern British—print dealers are coming into the market,” Rosslyn says.

However, she continues: “What’s been interesting over the past couple of years is that people are really cottoning onto editions, so that’s where I see quite a nice future for the fair,” Rosslyn says. Galleries like White Cube and Hauser & Wirth have set up editions departments with print specialists heading them up: “Hauser & Wirth is a particularly good example because their editions department is directed by Anders Bergstrom who is a really passionate and experienced print specialist.”

Editions is arguably a more contemporary term than prints, but whatever you call them, prints/editions are almost always cheaper than unique works and therefore have a much bigger market. With numerous works on offer in the low-hundreds of pounds, LOPF is the site of many first time buys. “I think a lot of artists realise that, in the very same way that Dürer did—he was very savvy and realised that if you made a load of etchings, the local carpenter could afford to buy one,” Rosslyn says. “It’s the same now—artists realise that their work can reach a lot more people if they produce affordable editions.”

While you might not make a fortune overnight by collecting prints, they tend to be more immune to market fluctuations than frothier sectors of the market. “In a funny way, prints remain quite steady in difficult markets, and it’s easy to track what another version of an edition was sold for which makes them appealing to newer buyers,” Rosslyn says. “A Picasso etching, for example, is a very solid buy as it’s never going to go skyrocketing but it’s never going to lose its value.”

This year’s event has over 40 exhibitors, including Abbott & Holder, Raw Editions, Counter Editions, Hauser & Wirth, White Cube, Jealous, Glasgow Print Studio and Austin Desmond Fine Art. New exhibitors include Delahunty, India Printmaker House, Taymour Grahne Projects and Hommage.

Rosslyn acknowledges that it is not an easy market for galleries or artists, and the outlay of a fair can be daunting. “I think it has been hard for a few years, and some of the smaller outfits are so dependent on funding from other sources, or having a good fair, or their artists producing a new edition, it can be hard for them to commit,” Rosslyn says. “So, we have to be quite creative about how we support them, for example being flexible about how big or small a space we give. We’re very keen to keep the smaller galleries and artist collectives, like [the artist-led gallery] Verbatim, Glasgow Printmaking Studio or India Printmaking House.”

The Hallett Independent Acquisitions Award, funded by the art insurance company, will return for the first time since the pandemic, granting £8,000 to a regional UK museum to buy a work from the fair—representatives from four shortlisted institutions will be invited to attend the fair and the recipient will be announced at the opening reception.

“We wanted to support smaller regional museums, many of whom have great print collections but small budgets,” Rosslyn says of the initiative, adding that she hopes to expand this prize in future so that curators can travel with a group of patrons.

• London Original Print Fair, 20-23 March, Somerset House, London