Fairs
United Kingdom
African art may get London fair
Fair will be international, de luxe and is planned for 2013
By Anna Somers Cocks. From Frieze daily edition
Published online: 11 October 2012
Africa is increasingly seen as the continent of opportunity, and where there is economic vigour, the West starts looking for new talent to feed the market. So African art could now be getting its own international fair, from 14 to 20 October 2013, to coincide with Frieze. Its name is 1:54, there being 54 sovereign countries in Africa. Touria El Glaoui from Marrakech has already raised much of the £500,000 needed to stage the fair in Somerset House, although more funds are still needed. The fair’s artistic director will be Koyo Kouoh, recently the artistic adviser to this year’s Documenta, and the architect will be David Adjaye, while the bespoke tailor Ozwald Boateng and the artist Hassan Hajjaj will advise on design. Glaoui aims to have up to 25 carefully selected galleries for the first edition, and believes the fair would promote African visual culture, give artists, writers and curators an international platform and generate money for the long-term development of the art scenes in the various African countries.
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