How Sydney Contemporary muscles smaller art fairs
Bo SeoReporter
Sep 11, 2019 – 3.56pm
When leading galleries unveil their exhibitions at the Sydney Contemporary this week, they will be fulfilling a contract that precludes them from showing in rival art shows. Everyone in the world insists, on the record, that this is not a problem.
"That's their rule, and that's fine," says Geoff Newton, co-founder of the small hotel-based art fair Spring 1883.
"We'd all like the option of doing whatever we like. But commercial reality is commercial reality," says gallerist Darren Knight, who has decided to show at the Sydney Contemporary this year rather than Spring 1883.
Kate Barber, Geoff Newton and Vikki McInnes are the co-founders of Spring 1883 art fair. Supplied
But multiple gallerists and artists, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal, say Sydney Contemporary's non-compete clause has sown rancour and division, which at times have boiled over into open confrontations.
Sydney Contemporary is Australia's largest contemporary art fair. The show at Carriageworks in Eveleigh features 90 galleries, representing works from 400 artists from 12 countries. John Kaldor and Lucy Turnbull sit on its advisory council.
Asked about the non-compete requirement, Sydney Contemporary fair director Barry Keldoulis says the policy is the "international standard".
"We expect the gallery directors and their team to be doing their best for their artists and the visitors to the fair at Sydney Contemporary, and you can't be in two places at once," he says.
As a gallerist and long-time art fair participant, Keldoulis wonders why anyone would want to participate in two fairs at once. "It's quite exhausting, physically and emotionally," he says.
Knight, whose eponymous gallery has participated in every Spring 1883 until this year, says Sydney Contemporary's rationale was reasonable, but that even in his small organisation, "the very good people who work here" could staff both events.
Other gallerists say that they would display different kinds of art at the Sydney Contemporary than at smaller art fairs, typically reserving young, emerging and experimental artists for the latter.
Station gallery director Simon Hayman, who is presenting the work of three artists at the Contemporary, adds that the more intimate presentation at the smaller fairs are especially suitable for private collectors seeking out pieces for their home.
Spring 1883 began at Melbourne's Hotel Windsor in 2014, and takes its name from the hotel's address and year of establishment. The art fair, which features around 30 galleries in customised hotel rooms, annually rotates between Sydney and Melbourne. Supplied
"The large-format fair is neither appropriate nor affordable for every gallerist or artist," he says.
But for Station, a gallery expanding into Sydney after eight years of operating in South Yarra, the exposure offered by the Contemporary was hard to pass up. Hayman calls it "an amazing opportunity to present our artists at their most prodigious scale".
Art fairs, which are trade shows that attract individual and institutional buyers, remain a central part of the global art market. According to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, aggregate sales at art fairs in 2018 reached $16.5 billion, or 46 per cent of total global dealer sales.
Local gallerists say that as the Australian dollar slides, the power of shows like the Sydney Contemporary over the domestic art scene will only increase as artists are priced out of overseas exhibitions.
Spring 1883 began at Melbourne's Hotel Windsor in 2014, and takes its name from the hotel's address and year of establishment. The art fair, which features around 30 galleries in customised hotel rooms, annually rotates between Sydney and Melbourne.
The art fair is timed to coincide with the Sydney Contemporary and the Melbourne Art Fair, and benefits from the savvy crowds that these larger shows attract.
But founder Geoff Newton says Spring 1883 also has something distinctive to contribute to the art scene. Key among these is the "collegiality" between fair operators and gallerists, enabled by the show's small size.
"We know each other and know each other's programs. We exist without the structure of big art fairs. It's much more organic and casual," he says.
A room at the Windsor Hotel during last year's Spring 1883 event. Supplied
Hotel-based installations were pioneered at the Gramercy Hotel in New York City in 1994, and were embraced this year by the Sydney Contemporary, who put up their own displays at the Sofitel in Darling Harbour.
Spring 1883 has lost at least four galleries to the larger fair, but says relationships with its former partners remain strong. The gallerists, for their part, are full of praise for the smaller show.
"I'm a great fan and believer in Spring 1883. It's a good, high-quality fair, and I'd like the option of showing in both. But I don't have that," Knight says.
For Hyman, small fairs strengthen the art ecosystem by catering to its breadth and diversity.
"For the ultimate health of the Australian art market, art must challenge the consensus, present new ideas and, of course, promote freedom of choice for both gallerist and artist. To be restricted to just one platform works against this philosophy," he says.
When The Australian Financial Review asks the founder of Spring 1883 whether he would institute a non-compete policy if he were in charge of the Sydney Contemporary, he laughs.
"I wouldn't be running the Sydney Contemporary," Newton says, "Thirty galleries is quite enough".
Bo Seo is a journalist for The Australian Financial Review based in the Sydney office. Email Bo at bo.seo@afr.com.au
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