In 2022 Art Projects presented a curated showcase of the freshest contemporary art from across the globe; it featured large-scale installations, solo shows and thematic group displays – selected and endorsed by a panel of key opinion formers and industry leaders.
Pryle Behrman, art critic and member of the Art Projects Selection Committee, returned to introduce the 18th edition of Art Projects.
ART PROJECTS 2022
For 2022, amongst the diversity of the selected work there was a sense of wishing to relook towards the future. Many of the featured artists looked inwards at their own emotions, beliefs and mythologies, but with a keen eye on what these subjects meant for the wider world, asking: how do my own experiences mirror and contrast with those of others, and how can times of reflection and re-evaluation help us build the world we want.
Highlights included a display by Perve Gallery celebrating the legacy of Portuguese surrealist master Cruzeiro Seixas, as well as a number of artists creating new works in situ at the Fair.
Arusha Gallery presented a solo booth by John Abell, entitled Horrorvacui, a new body of large scale framed linocuts.
Dunja Krcek’s A Forest Blanket, the main work of Austrian gallery Kunst ab Hinterhof, consisted of sewn-together pieces of fabric that had been dyed with differentiated plants and fauna and thus carry the information of the forest space within them.
Aleph Contemporary’s presentation was based on the essays of African American critic bell hooks with artists including Marcelle Hanselaar, Joana Galego and Cristine Ruiz Guiñazú.
2022 PARTICIPATING GALLERIES
Art Projects presents a curated showcase of the freshest contemporary art from across the globe, featuring large-scale installations, solo shows and thematic group displays. Pryle Behrman, art critic and member of the Art Projects Selection Committee, will once again return for 2022 to introduced this section as well as, The New Media Room, which is hosted as part of Art Projects as an accompanying programme of collaborative video and new media initiatives.
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The 16th edition of Art Projects brought together 19 international projects, curated solo shows and group exhibitions. This section for London Art Fair 2020, presented works that reflected on the dominant social, political and personal issues affecting artist’s around the world and accompanying works through The Screening Room, curated by Pryle Behrman.
The screening of Playtime, explored the increasing commodification in our society and how this encroaches on our leisure time. The work demonstrated the all-encompassing impact of technology under capitalism and some of the ways in which it blurs the boundaries between work and play resulting in ‘playbour’, a term coined in the early 21st century within the gaming industry. The Screening Room presented a collaboration between video artist David Theobald and design studio Studio Hyte.
Cork Printmakers exhibited work by a diverse group of artists, drawing upon the cultural history which has shaped the Irish landscape.
Highlights included Catherine Hehir and Noelle Noonan’s new series Brides of Print with mysterious signifiers. Robyn Litchfield at Nunnery Gallery employed landscape painting to reflect on her own cultural heritage, drawing on archival material and personal documents relating to the early exploration and colonisation of her native country New Zealand.
Meanwhile at ED CROSS FINE ART, Peruvian artist Cesar Cornejo’s installation proposed a new kind of monument which reflected the social reality of those living in shanty towns in Latin America.
A number of galleries featured in Art Projects exhibited artwork that explored our fragile relationship with the natural world.
In her bright landscape paintings, Canadian artist Judith Berry at Art Mûr rendered natural elements such as sticks, grass and vegetation to appear manufactured, posing the pressing question – what are the consequences of our interference with the natural world?
Anna Reading’s sculptures presented by Standpoint Gallery were built using a range of found material – from shredded foam to oyster shells – bringing into question the relationship between organic and synthetic items, whilst Olivia Bax’s large sculptural forms transformed elements that are familiar, such as a handle or a pipe, into an unconventional form.
A solo exhibition of Tom Down by Mint Art Gallery considered how the natural world has been idealised from the traditional Romantic landscape to today’s media. Taking visual clichés such as alpine vistas and forest idylls, he re-creates these scenes as maquettes using polystyrene, cardboard, glue and paint, before realistically rendering them in paint.
A number of exhibitors showcased artists who incorporate mathematical and technological ideas into their practice.
DAM Gallery exhibited code-based art by a range of early pioneers and middle-generation digital artists, including Frieder Nake’s plotter drawings produced by an algorithm trained to draw lines at random, questioning the ‘clean’ digital aesthetic that dominates the world of technology.
In contrast, Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts presented a more recent form of systems-based art with the work of Natalie Dower, a friend and colleague of many of the original British constructivist and systems painters of the 1950s and 60s. Her paintings and three-dimensional works, rooted in mathematical geometry, codes of proportion and colour theory, were shown in counterpoint with works on paper by six contemporary artists responding to her work.
Meanwhile Nadav Drukker at Knight Webb Gallery created unusual vessels in clay to communicate his research into theoretical physics to a wider audience.
White Conduit Projects presented a group exhibition drawing upon our anthropomorphic relationship with ‘things’, featuring brooches, paper sculptures, and ‘shoulder sculptures’ by artists Dunhill and O’Brien, which were worn by staff members during London Art Fair.
Textiles were also featured in Tamar Dresdner Art Projects ‘installation of hanging embroidered objects’ by Israeli artist Batia Shani, which addressed the global refugee crisis.