The Art Newspaper: ‘Galleries rely on tried-and-tested names at Frieze London’

Kabir Jhala, Anny Shaw, Tim Schneider
The Art Newspaper, 11 October 2023

As Frieze London marks a landmark anniversary, exhibitors and attendees on the VIP preview day were reflecting on how much the city’s art market has changed in the past 20 years. Although it has grown and professionalised, the heady optimism of the early 2000s has been missing in the last few years.

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It is not just large, established operations that report a doubling down on already-sold art. Younger galleries with contemporary programmes are looking to get in on the secondary market game too. Alex Vardaxoglou, whose gallery Vardaxoglou is taking part in Frieze London for the first time, has just signed his first estate, that of Robyn Denny. “It’s kind of unprecedented for a gallery my size to take on an estate. The 20th-century context is very important for my programme,” he says. The gallery is showing a solo presentation by the 28-year-old Tanoa Sasraku and has sold one to the Arts Council Collection, with two others on hold to institutions.