Ciaran Murphy, 'Palm Trees From Below', 2007. Courtesy Mother's Tankstation, Dublin
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
Until just four months ago, Soraya Rodriguez was running Zoo Art Fair from her old bedroom at her mother's house. These days, Rodriguez and her team operate from fashionable Whitechapel, east London , a much more fitting home for the fair that began as a satellite to Frieze four years ago but is now quietly making its name as a younger, cooler alternative in its own right.
Last year its showcase of emerging artists from young commercial galleries and non-commercial collectives and spaces took £1.7m in sales and drew visitors such as Tracey Emin, the Chapman Brothers and Peter Blake, while Charles Saatchi, and curators Norman Rosenthal and Nicholas Serota were spotted wandering the stands.
This year, Zoo Art Fair has a new home behind the Royal Academy. Leaving behind not only the quirky location that gave the fair its name but also Regent's Park, home to Frieze, is a bold move that demonstrates just how far the fair has come since it first set out its stall among the penguin pools of London Zoo. "It's good to shake things up," says Rodriguez. "I like doing things in threes. An old boss of mine used to say that in the first year everyone loves you, in the second year you have to sustain it and in the third year you have to start to change."
The Burlington Gardens building used to house the Museum of Mankind, to which Rodriguez was a frequent visitor during her days studying sculpture. Now 35, she embarked on a career in art with a BA at Liverpool University, then an MA at the Royal College.
"I was very intent on being Michelangelo by the age of 26, but that didn't quite work out," she says wryly. After a two-year break from the art world, Rodriguez joined the publications department at the Royal Academy, where she met Max Wigram. A year later she left to help Wigram with his business, acting as his "mini-me" as he expanded his gallery from his front room to his bedroom, eventually going on to become director of exhibitions at the New Bond Street gallery.
Three years later, Rodriguez upped sticks again. Within two weeks she had bumped into David Risley and Zoo was born. "Things like Max and Zoo could only have happened if I'd jumped ship without a clue as to what might happen. If I'd done the sensible thing and got a curating job at the Tate, none of this would have happened. I almost don't feel responsible for it."
But responsible she was, along with Risley, an art dealer who was curating the philanthropic Bloomberg Space (he has since left the fair to concentrate on his own gallery). "We had a nice blend of thinking of a fair not just as a commercial shop front," says Rodriguez. "We'd both been very excited about the arrival of Frieze. And it was clear, even from the first year, that it was turning into a calendar moment."
Rather than compete with Frieze, Risley and Rodriguez decided to add to it with a fair that would give a platform to the myriad young organisations that had sprung up in the capital since the millennium.
Having decided to become non-profit making ("because there was no other way of doing it"), they set about raising funds from collectors including Saatchi, Anita Zabludowicz and Jay Jopling. Many continue to sponsor the fair, under the title of "Honorary Zoo Keepers", and both Saatchi and Zabludowicz will have stands at this year's fair.
Since 2004, when there were 26 exhibitors, all from London, the fair has grown to take in regional and international organisations. This year, there will be 61 exhibitors from as far afield as Los Angeles, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, as well as exciting London spaces such as Riflemaker (which counts Gavin Turk, Jamie Shovlin and Julie Verhoeven among its artists) and Paradise Row, home to the cult photographer Poppy de Villeneuve. Rodriguez is hoping that sales will go up by another 30 per cent to top the £2m mark.
"London has kept its momentum," says Rodriguez. "In some ways that scares me because I wonder whether it's possible to sustain this much quality. Perhaps people think, 'the market's great, we can all live a nice lifestyle being a gallerist in a refrigerated space.' But then every year I think that and it's still going."
For now at least, there's no place she'd rather be. "I like being part of somewhere that's burgeoning, really struggling to achieve, constantly at it. It's much more die hard in London. You really have to think about it when you devote your life to it here."
So what should visitors be looking to buy? There is "something for everyone" from £50 imitation Bic pens by Gemma Holt on the Associates stand, to The Rape of the Sabine Women, an epic video artwork by Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation from the New York gallery Roebling Hall, costing £100,000. But it's not all about the price.
"People irritate me going on about the affordability of art. There is nothing affordable about art – making it isn't affordable, showing it isn't affordable, insuring, transporting, writing about it. It's a stupid idea to think that we have to tell the public that this is the only way they can access it. The most affordable thing in art is a Tate Modern ticket. You can pay £7 and own it for an afternoon and have an experience of it, which is the true thing that you take away and you don't have worry about the insurance, the transport, the cataloguing, the archive. How affordable is that?"
Rodriguez is equally dismissive of hedge-funders who tie up their assets in canvas. "It'll be a walk in the park for one sunny afternoon, but when the weather changes they won't come back. And who needs them? If you really love something, buy it. If you want to live with it and have tiny pieces of brain surgery done to you every day, then it's a good thing to do. Otherwise, buy a car or buy a dress," says Rodriguez. "It's funny how people expect art to give back this huge dividend on investment. If you spent £5,000 on a Christian Dior dress, you wouldn't eyeball the dress vendor and say 'is it going to cost twice as much in three years?' Why make art do that? It's not fair. Just buy it and love it."
Royal Academy of Arts, 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1 (020-7247 8597; www.zooartfair.com), 12 to 15 October
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