Now in its sixth edition, START Art Fair opens its doors to the public on 26 September 2019, offering a glimpse into emerging art practices from 30 countries worldwide. The fair, founded by David and Serenella Ciclitira, supports emerging artists and gives space to both galleries and individual artists to showcase their art within the walls of the Saatchi Gallery in London. Prices of the art on show range from as low as GBP100 to GBP80,000, allowing new and young collectors as well as established and seasoned ones to have a pick at the fresh art on offer.
In addition to the gallery and artist booths, there are a number of special projects as well as a half-day conference for the Collectors Club, organinsed by the Art World Forum. Co-founder of START David Ciclitira is quoted in the press release as saying:
This year START will present 100 artists and 25 galleries from 30 countries – these are young artists and galleries that are not hugely wealthy, we try to support them as much as possible. As we all know, London isn’t the cheapest place in the world, nor is it the cheapest place to buy art, so the key thing is to help them sell their work on an international stage. I believe that collectors – and especially younger collectors – are hugely important to that mission; it’s why we’re here. I am further delighted that following an extremely high volume of quality applications from galleries and self-representing artists we have opened a waiting list of accepted artists and for early applications to the 2020 show. This overwhelming volume of applications from so many exceptional undiscovered artists has led to an international expansion of the START brand details of which will be released in the coming months.
ASIA previews some of the must-sees from Asia-Pacific, Central Asia and the Middle East.
START Artist and Gallery Highlights
Hafez Gallery, founded in 2014 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is dedicated to the promotion of contemporary art from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, and invests its profit in its cultural and educational programme. At START, Hafez is bringing 12 artists from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, with works ranging from drawing and painting, to photography and mixed media. Not to be missed are the works of Filwa Nazer and Osama Esid. British-Saudi artist Filwa Nazer (b. 1972, Swansea, UK) received a BA in Fashion Design from the Marangoni School of Fashion and Design, Milan (1995) and now works between Jeddah and London. Writing and sketching are at the basis of her mixed media work, which employs collage, digital print, textiles and photography as tools to dissect and reassemble familiar visual imagery. Creating ambiguous and multilayered narratives, Nazer explores questions of emotional identity in relation to spatial and social contexts.
Syrian photographer Osama Esid was born in 1970 in Damascus and now lives in Minneapolis, USA. His photography engages with Orientalism, its visual elements and inherent contradictions. Focusing primarily on portraiture, Esid investigates the social preconceptions and stereotypes created in the West and in the Arab World. The exoticism of his images belies a deep critical gaze at the construction of the oriental fantasy. Esid hand-colours his black-and-white photographs, giving them a vintage appearance that accentuates the nostalgic quality of his images. In 2015 he presented a series of photographs at the Northern Lights Festival in the Twin Cities area that portrayed Syrian regufees in a camp in Turkey.
IADA (International Art Development Association), a non-governmental and non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting contemporary art from Kazakhstan and Central Asia, and ai projects, promoting wider awareness of Central Asian art in the UK, present three Central Asian artists. Not to miss is the work of Kazakh artist Askhat Akhmedyarov (b. 1965). Recognised as a pioneering artist in Central Asia, he graduated from Shymkent Art College in 1989 and was part of the avant-garde art group Kyzyl Tractor. Soon after, Akhmedyarov established his own individual practice, with provocative performances that speak up against the stifled freedom of expression in his own country.
London-based, Chinese multimedia artist Ming Lu (b. 1993) works with painting, photography, sculpture, installation and performance. Recently, she has been inspired by the everyday, transforming it into humorous works that reference symbols and language from Chinese history. Ming Lu also uses ordinary objects in her works, such as cosmetics, lingerie, furniture and food, among other things, and transforms them into playful, anthropomorphic representations of the female body and the female experience. Her practice thus separates objects from their contexts, giving them a new life and meaning.
Singapore-based gallery One East Asia will present a solo show of paintings by Filipino Andres Barrioquinto (b. 1976). The artist creates oil on canvas portraits of individuals immersed in oniric, surrealist landscapes. Created in a hyper-realist style, his compositions recall images from fashion photography. The superimposed elements present a wide range of references, from classical Asian art, like Japanese ukiyo-e, to the peacock, a ubiquitous symbol in Asia. In this style, he has painted the portraits of various Filipino personalities for a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila in 2018.
Premium Pages Collective is a subsidiary of Premium Pages, a strategic arts management and consultancy company based in Singapore since 2010. PPC represents and promotes international artists through art fairs in Asia and worldwide. At START, they are bringing the work of Korean ceramic artist Han A Ram. Born in Daegu, Han graduated with a Master’s degree in Ceramics from Yeungnam University, where she has continued teaching and curating ceramics. Her scultpures are expressions of “her pursuit of a naturalistic path towards the rationalization of knowledge”. One of the pivotal elements in her work is the reference to water as knowledge and wisdom, visualised through her book sculptures.
Hong-Kong based Sheetal Agarwal is an artist, photographer and award winning documentary filmmaker. Her documentaries have received several international accolades such as the Michael Moore Award Best Documentary Film at the 44th Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Best Documentary KODAK Award at the 20th Annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. Her recent documentary Please Choose Me was nominated for the Hong Kong Human Rights Arts Prize 2017. Her photographs on show are juxtapositions of different realities portrayed through her discerning lens. Images of familiar places, famous landmarks and objects, mix with poetic shots of landscapes, flying birds, moonlight and flowers, never to reveal a human figure or form. Like neverending puzzles in black-and-white, her images reflect an inner space where the mind can roam free.
Emirati artist Tania Nasir was trained in interior design, and later studied miniature painting. In her watercolour works, she uses Islamic geometric patterns from different regions and eras, using 23k gold paint and gold leaf to create various layers of details on handmade and hand-burnished paper. Her aim is to preserve tradition, not only in the techniques she uses and compositions she creates, but also in the philosophical nature of art and its practice. She has stated that “Art is a form of mediation that takes your imagination where reality cannot. It makes one see the fifth side of a square and read between the lines. Colours make your soul breathe its own style. Art speaks where the words are unable to explain.”
START Projects 2019
Fang Fang Liu (b. 1974, Beijing) studied oil painting at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2010-2011, and received an MA in Visual Islamic and traditional arts at the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts London (2016- 2018), where she was awarded the Ciclitira Prize for her final degree show in 2018. Since 2013, Fang has been working with Chinese gongbi painting (brush and ink), one of the oldest Chinese painting techniques, exploring its nuances and techniques. She employs the classical method while vividly depicting elements of contemporary life, or references traditional Chinese philosophical concepts.
In her series “Windows”, Fang juxtaposes western objects like souvenirs or toys with Chinese surroundings, such as a traditional study, populated by small animals from different seasons, laden with symbolism in Chinese tradition. Here the artist explores the relationship between two cultures, and the diversity and conflict she herself has also experienced while living in China and in the West. In other series, like “Time Stands Still” and “Portrait of Nature”, Fang develops and employs the techniques of composition and colour of traditional Chinese painting while exploring various traditional concepts such as “less is more”, “deficiency and excess”, “Yin and Yang”, “dynamic and static”.
London-based, British-Iranian painter Hana Louise Shahnavaz is the winner of the Ciclitira Prize 2017. Like Fang Fang Liu, she also studied at the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts London, receiving an MA in Traditional Arts in 2017, after having spent six years studying Persian painting under the tutorage of master painter Safoura Asadian in Iran. The artist’s work is part of collections worldwide, including the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia’s permanent collection. In Shahnavaz’s work, the Persian miniature legacy is vividly visible in its subject matter and richness of detail and adornment.
The vibrant palette references the Persian tradition she has skillfully learned, capturing plants, people, animals and Islamic patterns enriched by 24ct gold and rare mineral pigments. Some of these unique pigments include an ancient, prehistoric, petrified tree and 100-year-old sea-weathered charcoal. Many of her paintings contain a colourful range of earth from Iran, as well as Lapis Lazuli, cinnabar and malachite. Celebratingthe beaty of the natural world, Shahnavaz is fascinated by Persian art and literature, its stories, poetry and folk traditions providing inspirationg for her work.
Michelle Poonawalla grew up between the UK and India, in an artistic family. Her grandfather Jehangar Vazifdar was one of India’s preeminent architects, responsible for some of the most famous buildings in Mumbai. She studied Interior Design and received a BA from the American College, London. Poonawalla’s practice formalised with her exhibition in 2016 at the Gateway School, Mumbai, for which she worked closely with special needs students. Since then, she has been exhibiting internationally. Her multimedia installation Introspection, to be shown at START, was first exhibited at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2018 and at Alserkal Avenue during Art Week Dubai in March 2019.
Introspection was inspired by the sense of discomfort and unease provoked by the way images of violence and displacement are consumed today, in endless news cycles. Creating an intense immersive experience, the installation combines Poonawalla’s experiments with digital technology and sound. The work employs audio clips from newsreels and ambient sounds, motions sensor technology and digitally mapped visuals. The artist hopes to push the audience into a contemplative space, as when a person ‘feels’, she uses all of her senses, enhancing memory, as Poonawalla says: “As technology and installations make possibilities endless, they become more impactful, as when a person ‘feels’, they ‘remember’.”
The Korean Eye 2020 Teaser Exhibition features 12 visual artists and one performance artist, providing a glimpse into the larger “Korean Eye 2020: Contemporary Korean Art” show featuring 30 artists to launch in St. Petersburn in Spring 2020, travelling to the Saatchi Gallery in the summer and finishing in Seoul in Autumn 2020. The artists in the teaser show include Doowon, Chung Doo- Hwa, Kim Jae Il, Hayoung Kim, Hun Kyu Kim, Yun-Hee Toh, Lee Jeonglok, Eemyun Kang, Kim Bumsu, Helena Parada-Kim, Da In Park and Cha Jongrye. Next year’s exhibition will be accompanied by a book published by SKIRA featuring a collection of works by 75 artists. “Korean Eye 2020” marks the 10th anniversary of PCA’s Global Eye Programme, an initiative that charts Asian artistic talent by staging Eye Exhibitions around the world.
The show will chart the experience of contemporary artists who have shaped their practices influenced by their own Korean heritage as well as the international art world, reflecting the multifaceted Korean identity through works ranging from painting on local fabric, silk paintings, photography, sculptures, light installations to performance art. Part of the exhibition is a special section on the ground floor, START x Roland Mouret, co-curated by Serenella Ciclitira and fashion designer Roland Mouret, which in line with Mouret’s devotion to the promotion and celebration of empowered women, will feature two Korean women artists: Seoul-based Hyojin Park and London/Seoul-based Meekyoung Shin.
START Art Fair opens to the public on 26 September and runs until 29 September 2019 at the Saatchi Gallery, London.