Governors Island Art Fair

I went to the Governors Island Art Fair for the first time today. Organised by the group 4heads, who specialise in commandeering and beautifying unused spaces, this art fair is in it's 4th year and is "run by artists for artists". There were well over 100 artists and 7 different galleries exhibiting a really broad variety of work from 2D works on paper, canvas and aluminium to sound, performance and installation art.  They have taken over 4 disused buildings on Governors Island that appear to have once been houses and some artists in particular have really made the most of the unusual space. I was there for over 2 hours as there was so much to see, definitely a little something for everyone.

"Head Grid" - Barbara Friedman

Artist Barbara Friedman's painting "Head Grid" was on display which I found so intriguing and was drawn to because of her amazing use of colour. I subsequently went onto her website and am now obsessing over her "Overlook" series - www.barbarafriedmanpaintings.com.

Affordable Art Fair

We went to the Affordable Art Fair this weekend which had a great variety of new work from all over the world. There were a few paintings there that had been resined and I have to admit I had a moment of smug satisfaction when I noticed that many of them also had rather a lot of dust embedded in their surfaces - at least it's not just me who has this problem! 


I particularly loved the work of Phuong Quoc Tri, whose monochrome oil paintings of female nudes I thought were hauntingly beautiful.  There was also the work of up and coming New York based artist Erik Sanner, who uses video projections laid over original paintings to create installations of constantly changing "moving paintings". These were particularly original and fun to view. Last but not least, Zhou HongBin's "Aquarium 10" also really struck us as an amazing piece of photography.

Unfortunately, the pieces we fell in love with were not quite so "affordable" so we didn't buy anything. However, it was still great to see so much talent and so many new ideas emerging.