Jane Suitor
“I’ll start with Lindsey Mendick’s ceramic handbags at Carl Freedman Gallery, based in Margate, which are under £10,000. I’ve met Lindsey once before, somewhat fleetingly, but I was drawn to her enthusiasm and humour, and that transfers into her work. She has specially designed the plinths for her work to be exhibited on, so it provides some guidance to a buyer as to how to place them. Typically, I will suggest to my clients the best ways to exhibit works, but my rule is: advise, don’t dictate.
Another artist who caught my eye is Andreas Schulze, whose paintings are on the stand of Sprüth Magers. I believe he is one of the first artists shown by [the gallery’s co-founder] Monika Sprüth. One of his small paintings, a window work, is under £10,000. It’s like a window into another portal and can be displayed really high or really low.
I know this one is over the limit, but for £14,000, there is a beautiful painting by Nova Jiang at Union Pacific’s stand that caught my eye. It has a post-Modernist twist. It looks like a beautiful painting of a plant in a pot, but then it has a Surrealist-style pair of scissors cutting the plant, making it slightly more sinister. I like that dichotomy.”
Benjamin Godsill
“Forget about great work under £10,000, it’s tough to find any work under £10,000 at Frieze London these days. Still, this edition had a few, and also introduced me to a new gallery and a new artist, which is very exciting—that doesn’t always happen. HOA Gallery from Brazil is showing incredible paintings by Mariana Rocha for around $8,000 to $10,000. They deal with water and how life changes in a liquid sense. They are very accomplished works; you could see one living next to an Albert Oehlen—they’re incredible for this price point.
My second choice is from the New York gallery Helena Anrather, where there are some great Leon Xu paintings, priced between $8,000 and $15,000. There’s a great painting for $5,300, titled Never been so sure in my life, which shows a figure looking out of a plane window onto a nondescript city below—a sight most of us in the global art world circus are all too used to. The work is rendered in a gauzy style, like much of Xu’s work. Who knows what it’ll be worth one day, I’m not saying either of these works will be great investments, but they’re nice pieces to live with.”
