Weighing London

LONDON—The challenges of mounting a fair abroad are always considerable, and with the current exchange rate at a whopping $2 to the pound, and London an almost prohibitively expensive city to begin with, putting on a fair in London right now seems a daunting proposition. But this year two American fairs—Pulse and Bridge—are taking the plunge into the London market anyway and debuting satellites. And Scope, the one fair that isn’t on the scene this year, says its absence has nothing to do with the pound or the five-hour time difference. ARTINFO spoke to the organizers of all three fairs about their decisions to be or not to be.

 

Pulse
Helen Allen says she knew it was only a matter of time before the Pulse Art Fair, launched in Miami in 2005, expanded to London. “We have been thinking about it from the outset,” she says, “but we felt it had to be the right timing, the right venue, and we didn’t want to expand too quickly.”

With two solid years behind them, though, Allen felt, “now was the right year.” And when she found a location—the Mary Ward House, an old Georgian manor in the Bloomsbury district—she knew.

“It’s always hard breaking into a new city,” says Allen, director of Pulse, “but we have a very strong and loyal following of collectors and curators and museum directors, and our exhibitors showed tremendous interest in going over there. And surprisingly there was a large number of American exhibitors, despite the exchange rate, that really wanted to have the opportunity to present their artists in London.”

But Allen’s not concerned about the high exchange rate. “The art market is primarily a luxury market, so when you’re dealing with galleries you’re dealing with people with sizable disposable incomes and usually a commitment to collecting,” she says. “you’re not talking about your average thirtysomething who’s trying to decide whether or not to go out to dinner that night. You’re dealing with people who are in a different bracket.”

Still, the works presented by Pulse’s 42 exhibitors tend to be relatively low in price, with most between £500 and £10,000. The highest sums Allen has seen are for a few pieces in the £70,000 range.

In London, as before, Pulse aims to “bridge the gap between the established and the alternative fairs.” At the Mary Ward House, which Pulse will fully occupy October 11 to October 14, that’ll mean that people like Ernst Hilger, who’s shown at Basel for decades, will exhibit alongside newcomers like Tokyo Gallery or Fabio Tiboni from Bologna, or, like Hilger, will present works by both established and emerging artists side-by-side.

As an alternative to Frieze, says Allen, Pulse offers younger, less expensive artists, but she knows that the fair, particularly in this relatively small venue will draw only a fraction of Frieze’s crowd. She expects to see about 5,000 to 6,000 visitors, or about a tenth of what the larger event has predicted

Bridge
For the Bridge Fair, which began in 2005 and is known for presenting emerging art in offbeat locations in Miami and Chicago, London is a resting stop on the way to other destinations. “We decided to start a fair in London in order to begin to develop a European presence with the eventual goal of opening expositions into further Eastern destinations,” says director Michael Workman. “Besides the fact that London was English-speaking, it’s also become a financial rival in recent years to New York, mainly on the current strength of the pound in relation to American currency.”

He says the weak dollar might actually be a blessing for exhibitors this year, despite the higher cost of doing business: “Our galleries can bring their dollar-priced works to the English market and this will make them available to collectors at a very accessible rate.”

The new fair will take place at the posh Trafalgar Hotel October 11 to October 14. “I’ve never seen a more swish location for an art fair,” says Workman. “You can’t visit the Trafalgar and not feel that you’ve been a part of something special—it’s just that nice of a hotel.”

Workman expects the fair’s 60 exhibitors to attract about half as many visitors as Frieze’s anticipated 60,000. The work on offer falls mostly in the $100 to $10,000 range, with a few pieces swinging upward to $20,000 to $50,000 and higher.

New to the new Bridge is a 35-and-younger section called Verge. In the future, the section will be spun off into “its own independent art exposition” in growth markets that don’t yet have a presence in the international art world.