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Re: The Frieze Art Fair versus The Free Art Fair

From:     Vastin Pance
Category: Art
Date:     16 October 2009
Time:     08:34 AM

Review:

My instincts tell me that the Free Art Fair should not only exist but proliferate at the same rapid
rate that Art Fairs did throughout this decade - The notion of a Free Art Fair posits some extremely
exciting ideas - much to the chagrin of the difficult to identify art-establishment, do they on the
one hand ignore the rise of Free Art at the risk of incubating interest through absence or do they
actively groom the upstart in the way that many toff galleries were urged to join the legions of art
fair's as their popularity and economic success increased throughout the nineties?
The Free Art Fair's appeal is not the crass kiss up of the corporate fat cat trying to look
streetsmart, buying into bloody banksy, it is actually far more of a subversion, standing out as an
identifiable group of practicing artists in a wiley art world. The Free Art Fair goes some way
towards releasing the shorting-out effect that the art world is truly suffering from, effecting a
return to aesthetic value over economic value, notice the rather fay reference of Graysum Perry's
embroidered sycophancy in the Frieze Fair, a knowing knod to the house of Southeby as a dog being
led along by it's corporate master, not the sort of ethical quandary that the artist would engage in
- Oh No, that would be sooooo opportunistically unauthentic. Free Cheers to the Free Art Fair.


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