Review - Zoo Art Fair may not be as big as Frieze, but it is trendier, smaller, cheaper and perhaps a more realistic option for most of us writes Freya McClelland. Zoo Art Fair runs until October 20 at The Royal Academy, London
This weekend the London art fairs Frieze and Zoo go- head-to-head and, of course, the big collectors will go to both. But if that isn’t you, then while Frieze may have been the original London art fair, these days Zoo, the trendier, smaller and cheaper little sister is perhaps a better option.
Frieze has gone stratospheric, some say too commercial, too busy, too expensive and simply too big. There is only so much art to take in at once before saturation point.
Zoo Art Fair, despite its opulent building behind the Royal Academy in London, is smaller - there are just over 50 galleries to Frieze's 150.
But apart from size, Zoo, is now making her own mark and in many respects is more interesting than Frieze. Frieze is to a large extent about fêting the big galleries and the big names that they represent: White Cube, Gagosian, Victoria Miro; Gormley, Opie, Emin and all the big names (and big price tags) you would expect.
You need to pack a hefty financial punch to be in the running. Whereas Zoo is more agile, more cutting edge and about young artists and new galleries on the cusp of making it. Pick the right artist and you could make a real future investment. Artworks can go for anything from £300 to £100,000.
Zoo Art Fair 2008. Courtesy Marta Papini
“All of the galleries are under six years old,” says Soraya Rodríguez, the director of Zoo. “We also try to include as many non-commercial arts organisations as possible - artists' collectives, project spaces, curatorial groups. The Zoo names may not be well known now, but they will be.”
Karla Black, last year’s winner of the Zoo Champagne Perrier-Jouet Prize for the best artist at the fair, is one rising star. The prize was worth £10,000 - the cost of renting a studio in Glasgow, where she lives, for an entire year, with money for living costs leftover. This year Black has a small solo exhibition on the bottom floor of the fair.
‘Up is Open’ (2008) is made of scattered domestic substances and art store materials: cotton wool balls, make-up and chalky white powder reminiscent of medicines for minor ailments or household cleaners.
Black says, “They ‘re caught between thoughtless gestures and seriously obsessive attempts at beauty.”
Her sculptures are never really finished until they are in place, and are often unavoidably destroyed or damaged, when an exhibition is over. While this might make them impractical for a living room, the effect is thought-provoking; simultaneously transient and throwaway but also a comment on empty modern vanity.
“What we liked about her,” says Sir Norman Rosenthal, the chairman of the award, “was the simplicity of the work. She works with the simplest and most humble of domestic materials - anything from polythene to soap or plaster - and somehow makes extraordinarily imaginative works of art out of them.”
Zoo Art Fair 2008. Courtesy Marta Papini
From Workplace Gallery, Laura Lancaster's installation of 43 Paintings (2008) stem from her collection of anonymous films and photographs. The images contain glimpses of people and emotions from stages in the term of a relationship and possess a poignant sense of history and melancholy.
Rachel Lancaster's paintings and photographs use still images gleaned from cult television and film. The urban graphic shades of ‘Smoke’ (2008) where the vague cityscape seen through the window of an office is blurred with cigarette smoke, reminiscent of film-noire. Isolated from their narrative context objects and events are disconnected and unsettling while enigmatic.
From Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul, Haris Epaminonda is causing stirs. Currently based in Berlin, Epaminonda caught the art world’s eye last year when she represented Cyprus at the Venice Biennale. Her work quickly picked up notice from the likes of Frieze magazine and Art Review and her collages here are stark and powerful.
Another of Zoo’s most anticipated newcomers, the Fife-born Ewan raised some eyebrows last year when she installed an aviary of 12 parrots in Edinburgh’s Embassy Gallery.
The work was an exploration of protest culture – Ewan trained the parrots to recite slogans from the G8 summit, with a couple eventually squawking ‘revolution!’
‘I’m interested in the way that politics can be absorbed into popular culture, and how politics in history can translate into the present, or produce ripples of meaning,’ she says.
Zoo Art Fair 2008. Courtesy Marta Papini
Her sculptures hosted by Ancient and Modern Gallery at the Fair continue to provoke rebellion through humour.
Outside, in and around Zoo Art Fair, philosophical theatre and art group The House of Fairy Tales use a range of mediums to create a magical, dream-like and whimsical atmosphere so suited to weird and wonderful carnival world of Zoo.
It does feel like a big party, with bustling crowds, boisterous and irreverent. But lots of people are buying.
It may seem like an odd time to launch into a money-intensive pursuit generally considered the preserve of the rich and the richer - especially as banks merge and housing markets crash - but experts insist the timing couldn’t be better.
With so much uncertainty, art is at least a tangible investment, and one that seems untouched by the current economic downfall. The trick is to pick something you like and will enjoy looking at over the years while it becomes more coveted, more valuable. Even if doesn’t you still have something you like. Unlike fine wine, another boom industry, you get to enjoy your purchase without consuming it.
Whether you go to buy or just to look at Zoo you cannot but enjoy the fun of the Fair.
Tickets £15.00 on the door.
