The Scottish organisers and dealers Arte in Europa, best known for organising the ‘Edinburgh Art Fair’, are expanding south of the Border with a new fair in Cheshire.
Art Cheshire opens at The
Mere Golf Resort and Spa near Knutsford from September 21-23, with
28 exhibitors from the UK and Ireland offering 20th century and
Contemporary art.
It's an affordable range of commercially
appealing artwork in a wealthy area that, although not short of
antiques fairs, has little in the way of specialist art fairs.
But the North West is certainly not
lacking in artists, with the market for northern art booming in
recent years, and a number of the galleries will bring work by
local names. Cheshire-based Jo Bennett
Originals specialises in north western artists and
will bring works by John Thompson (1924-2011), Manchester artist
Geoffrey Key (b.1946) and the Czech-born Jiri Borsky (b.1945), who
is now based in The Potteries.
Although London
gallery Eleven and a Half specialise in
work by Cornish artists such as John Piper (b.1946), Terry Whybrow
(b.1932) and Michael Praed (b.1941), they will also bring pieces by
Macclesfield-born Simon Pooley, while Wilmslow artist Andrew Hood
(b.1964) has paintings on the stand of First
Contemporary and Cheshire-based Anita Henderson is
represented by the Enid Lawson Gallery.
Other exhibitors include Wren
Gallery from Burford;
Bristol's Alexander
Gallery; Edge Fine Art of
Shropshire with 20th century work by William Gear (1915-97), Robert
Adams (1917-84) and Keith Vaughan (1912-77); Number
Nine The Gallery from Birmingham
and Sol Art Gallery from Dublin with
Irish artists including fashion designer Paul Costelloe
(b.1945).
Manchester Scene
A more established art fair in this neck
of the woods is The Manchester Contemporary, now in
its fourth year and running from September 28-30 (preview September
27) in Quay House in the Spinningfields development, a sort of
Canary Wharf for Manchester.
It is organised by Buy Art
Fair Limited and runs alongside the Buy Art
Fair, a larger, more mainstream event with around 50
exhibitors and a wider range of art, which also takes place in
Spinningfields over the same dates.
The idea behind Manchester
Contemporary is that it is an affordable, curated event
with a smaller selection of galleries and a steering committee made
up of The Manchester Art
Gallery, Contemporary Art Society
and The International 3, who curate the
fair.
With prices starting at around £50, the
event hopes to foster new collectors of Contemporary art outside
London and is complemented by a series of events and talks by
curators and artists that run alongside the fair - this year there
are 13 invited exhibitors and nine smaller project spaces.
The new exhibitors this year include
Rotterdam curator/gallerist Anne-Marie Ros
Projects, who brings work by Dutch and American artists
like Jeroen Bodewits (b.1971), Mirjam Somers (b.1971), John Curran
(b.1970) and Anna Tanner (b.1979).
Also new are London
galleries Rob
Tufnell, Rokeby and Rod
Barton, and the Manchester-based Untitled
Gallery.
Regular exhibitors
include Man & Eve and Ceri
Hand from London, Gateshead's Workplace
Gallery and Bureau from
Manchester.
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