London Art Fair 2010

We look at the art and photography trends for the year as seen at the recent London Art Fair.

For the uninitiated or merely curious, waltzing into one of the U.K’s leading auction houses or art galleries can be a rather daunting experience. Preconceptions about snobby art dealers and exorbitant price tags still proliferate and that’s to say nothing of the intimidating process of bidding – arguably an art form in itself.

Mercifully, London’s annual art fairs allow everyone from the fledgling art fan to the most ardent collector an opportunity to peruse all that’s hot and upcoming in the art world at their leisure.

Celebrating its 22nd anniversary, this year’s London Art Fair offered a dazzling survey of the latest art practices all under one roof, featuring 136 galleries from the U.K, Europe and the United States. Coming this early in the year, it acts as a vital indicator of the trends we might expect in 2010. And best of all there was something to suit almost every pocket, with prices ranging from a mere £50 to hundreds of thousands.

Spread across three floors and encompassing photography, installation, drawing, paint and video it was hard to know which display to tackle first. At first sight, the task of actually isolating any prevalent themes, dialogues and similarities between the works seems overwhelming. If you’re not careful you run the risk of meandering around in a delirious haze, so intoxicated by the eclectic range of talent that you forget to ask yourself the questions any serious art lover should, or worse still simply miss out on seeing something truly startling.

Fortunately this was avoided by siphoning off prominent floor space devoted to curated solo shows and group exhibitions and the work of selected photographers. It is within these areas that you begin to see this year’s dominant subjects and concerns.

Photo50 consisted of the work of 12 selected artists many of whom engage with the idea of place. They gently ask us to reassesses our everyday surroundings and how these relate to a global culture that we may be less familiar with. Polly Braden’s work is particularly striking here. Eschewing the more typical depiction of the grandeur or squalor of China for a focus on real people, she avoids the rudimentary metaphors more commonly used to capture and limit our understanding of this vast country. Instead her use of the smallest human gestures and expressions hint at the profound changes that have occurred in society. The effect is simple and quite humbling.

Located on level one, the Art Projects section continued this distinctly, and unapologetically political bias. Top of the agenda here is a brusquely contemplative examination of the mass media’s role in illuminating our understanding of contemporary society. Violent images from Mexico sit alongside vintage photographs of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks as we are prompted to take a second look at role the media plays in shaping our preconceptions.

The overriding question is about control – who really shapes the beliefs that can lead to prejudices – the broadcasters or the viewers? The issues of culpability and integrity could not be more relevant to this troubled age and we can only hope that this is an indication of the sort of work that we are going to see more of as 2010 rolls on.