When:

20 October - 24 October 2021

Where:

Battersea Park

We attended the annual Affordable Art Fair south of the river over the weekend, something we attend annually with eagerness to stumble across some exciting new work from up and coming artists.

The fair stipulates art that costs anywhere between £100-£5000 which caters to everyone wanting to start out their collection or building on their collection. Proving that not all art will make your eyes water at the price. The event is definitely has become more popular as they set up the tents in different locations all over Europe.

We stumbled across a few artist that caught our eye. The first is a fairly established artist named Claire Grossman, her painting ‘Nude in Blue’ was an elegant piece of the back of a female body. On research of the artist Grossman paints to encapsulate in a emotional response which she certainly did as viewer.

We also stumbles across Jane Clatworthy a figurative artist focusing on male nude. On research Clatworthy believes the male nude is underrepresented in recent art history. Her work is based primarily on the male form, explores concepts of masculinity and vulnerability. It encourages questions and dialogue on the validity of the patriarchy of today’s culture.

We thought the contrast of the two that caught our eye was refreshing to see, something that we haven’t come across when attending the show annually. Trailing through the endless rows of art there is quite a few art works and sculptures that are repeats. Sophie Derrick an artist who has really blown up from when we first laid eyes on her photography 3 years ago had her own dedicated stand, showcasing her mixed media technique of painting onto her own skin, photographing it and the painting on top of the image transforming properties of paint.

The last the thing that caught our eye is a photographer (unfortunately did not get the name) with quite striking background capturing children playing. The colours striking colour used stand out as quite showstopper pieces. The small selection that was displayed captures innocence and the beauty of childhood so candidly! We would definitely would invest.

All weekend the art fair held a draw where members are encouraged to participate in winning a £500 vouchers at a furniture company which was a nice touch to compliment the a new art piece that you would buy at the fair.

All in all this is one of the medicore Art fairs that I have been in a while. There was a lot of repetition over the recent years that was presented throughout.

Words by Patrice Antwi