LONDON ART FAIR 2026: CRITIC'S DIARY
- Animal Vegetable Mineral
- 2 days ago
- 11 min read
Updated: 24 hours ago
FETCH's in-house art spy AVM finds herself cresting a wave of show-boaters, unaroused and Sipwrecked on dry stands at the London Art Fair 2026.
Photography courtesy of LAF/Mark Cocksedge
DAY ONE
Flumes of Italian milk fire with water park precision from the Illy machines. Forgive me for thinking that a titan of the coffee world might result in a fair awash with hand-crafted crema. Alas, this art is reduced to the teat of convenience, forced to watch whilst a machine cuckolds the barista, a depressing foreshadowing of the fate which awaits most all of us in this room Business Design Centre, a reduction of the form, nothing more than an Illy Ad.
Lost already, get used to it. I, a keen-eyed spy at the best of times, was reduced to a disaffected shadow of my former self by fairmaxxxing too hard in my first hours there. Does the London Art Fair 2026 count as a significant event in the current siege of the Western world? This is the Ascot of the Art Fairs, entirely unnecessary, riddled with pomp. 90% of its attendees are directly affected by President Chump’s recent threat to tariff champagne by 200%, the other 10 could ring up the current price of sliced bread.
On first arrival, I was glinting. Small pieces of Extra Strong Packing Tape on my jacket, catching a heresy of overhead lights. Forgive me for being a doting sister who spent the afternoon wrapping her brother's treasured artworks in newspaper, cardboard boxes, bags for life. The bucolic pace of Somerset straight to level 10 commuter snake belt, then coughed out at Waterloo, skies above sickly, blurred.
Blame it on the fact that I’d just been paid for my two months-ago gallery babysitting job, but I enter LAF with a buyers eye. And why not? Aside from the obvious imposition of cost. By the snoop’s end, I’ll be borrowing from Alveston Fine Art’s Dan Hollings’ gobby oils - I don’t pick the flowers, I just admire the gardens.
A 6:09pm arrival time colours me empty-handed. What of the promised gift bags? And complimentary sipsmiths? CoZZy livs has reached Islington; God bless.
The division starts at the entrance: who gets access to free coat check, who must lug their bag prohibitively around. As I breeze past the door girls in black button downs, looking like 3rd or 4th violins, waiting in the wings, I spy Mona Lisa at the bar. The menacing, monacled Sipsmith swan stirrer keeps hitting my under eye bags - threatening a bruise, furthering the amethyst shadow already there, providing a trophy of opening night, for the distilling eye of tomorrow.
Feeling devious, I lean against a partition to see if it’ll shift. Catching my breath an elderly man in coordinating blues gives me the eye, tossing a ‘like the outfit’ my way as he passes by. I am not in gallerina black, nor old money navy blue. As such, I slip between the gap of the middle, a spy on the wall, in peace to judge and accrue.
Not even the strictest intermittent art-fasters could be loosened by a single free drink. Perhaps I’m just horny, but I could swear the bins signage included direction about where to dispose of clothes, positioning us ethically, I thought, for the debauchery to come.
Before long, someone does the honours, the champagne starts to flow. Judging by the first floor demographic, it’s the old boys in blue, middle row. At first glance, up here is a wasteland; people are eating wraps. We’re in the bring the bar to the smoking area part of the night, and as such, the questions come thick, fast.
But this isn’t a normal night out, or a cross-section accurate to any demographic, other than People Who Would Describe Themselves as Discerning rather than Judgemental. Pedro Pascal, if that was you, congratulations for being the only actor taller in real life, and I hope ‘Zach’, Dean West’s lone cowboy, brings you every happiness, much clout. Whilst the blue chip non-commercial old galleries do not change clientele, they have no need to change the timbre of artists represented. No need for studio visits to grubby little horseboxes in Leyton, or precarious guardianship spaces on the Hackney Wick-Olympic Park border.
On the second floor (bar wrapped in Miami neons, Tampa Bay tourism partnership, distinct smell of salmon roll-ups), LAF does its bit to allow attendees to ENCOUNTER smaller galleries.
This is a vibe check, a shuffle of the Top Trump deck (how bout them tariffs?), not a prediction or accurate description of the art market today. Why? Because the former is more fun, and the latter could not possibly be gleaned by a claustrophobic best in show-show, in a business centre one level up from a Cineworld Multiplex.
DAY TWO
We know this from hedonism: there is such a thing as having too much. Have you ever heard Italian so moneyed being spoken it sounds like Russian? What do you expect outside Fairhead Fine Art (Stand 48) (Hockneys, Cassis Neil and Chagalls within)?
Never trust a gallerist as far as you can throw them. They can find more than ten words to describe a drawing of a pencil. If they can’t be thrown, keep them close, nurture them as your own. On fourth day thoughts, it’s really quite sexless. Chances of getting swept off my feet seem non-existent. Perhaps I should have expected it to be sedate, at least that helps to explain all the chairs.
Photography courtesy of LAF/Mark Cocksedge
This is not a fair for the reckless. There’s Frieze for that. Or Aspen, or Miami somewhere, newer places with less silt, grit and guilt. This is London Art Fair 2026, an Illy Ad for homeowners, a curated collection of old favourites, new apeings, a 5 day long episode of Homing by The Modern House.
So, if it’s a set for styling, let us take upon some of the decor delights. It’s not all Stella McCartney star platforms, or Moncler, or tech bro Burberry boots. We have AC/DC beanies (yes the band, not a new Fashion East brand), those fucking PET clogs, nude tights failing to hide leg tattoos, silver monster truck Pumas, and, most memorably, a woman in fur stole, leaning on a younger gallerist at Jonathan Clark (Stand 33), puckered nylons scooped up by Westwood bondage boots, asking for a discount, a couple k off, just between me and you?
A wise man recently told me never to read an introduction to start. Come back to it later, with your own wisdom to impart. So although I write them myself, I make a choice to abstain from reading a single show note - other than that which unavoidably catches my eye (from the droningly obvious "a lot of thought went into these pieces" to the downright dubious "National Trust looks after places so people and nature can thrive").
In fact, why is the National Trust here (‘we look after nature, beauty and history for everyone, for ever’ - big claim) and is there anywhere they do not own land?
Twentieth Century Architects Series. Erno Goldfinger. 1, 2 and 3 Willow Road, Camden, Greater London. Exterior view of the terraced houses of 1, 2 and 3 Willow Road, Camden, London. Courtesy of National Trust Images/James O. Davies
I station myself before an accompanying documentary for less than a minute, watch a woman in a room panelled with improbably beautiful wood, utter the subtitled line, ‘as a child, I just felt sort of sophisticated actually’. Insult is added to injury, and a confirmation of which demographic is being entirely dismissed or retained only through the desperate prism of aspiration when I read it tenderly described that Ursula Goldfinger [artist, wife of Ernö, heiress to the Crosse & Blackwell fortune] funded the project of creating a museum home (1-3 Willow Road) ‘with her inheritance’. I can see from the floorplan that there was a space built specifically for cloaks.
A for whom exactly foreshadowing. LAF is a city farm of house-fits - burlap baskets of books, artfully leaning frames, chairs very much not for sitting in, which match the works nearby. An omnibus of How Would This Look in your House. The western industrial house tour complex, where personal brand me, myself and marketing leaves its indelible mark on the innocent forehead which might once have furrowed, or flushed, responding simply to the art in front of it.
DAY THREE
And on the third day, I have no choice but to double down on anonymity. I’m getting noticed, getting caught taking close up photos of boots (Westwood?), ashtrays (ceramic, Gaulloise, very good). I come wearing a hat.
The care panel is on. I delight in beholding E-I-C Victoria Comstock-Kershaw in full Britney, from the double of her denim to the beige mic hugging her cheek. Is it too ouroboureal for ya? The womxn need a platform, and will undeniably be best placed to talk convincingly about care but by keeping soft subjects separate, the cottage industry complex of Female Artists remains intact.
Nonetheless, VCK does her best, asking the panel to reckon with the capitalist competition of the western art market - is there a place for care in there? A man with dirty fingernails and a huge yawn takes a weary photo of the women on the stage. He then takes a laptop out of his bag and plugs it into a portable charger.
Artist Rebecca Byrne responds, "making the work is an act of caring for myself" to which ceramist Orly Kritzman later adds "if the work is honest, then by way of extreme earnestness, it is a radical act of care in itself." A mystery asker notes that there is "something fundamentally something mentally wrong with a lot of artists…we who unnecessarily expose ourselves to the horrors of the outside world." Three artists, 45 minutes, a magic spell of humanisation renders the fair even colder and madder on my return.
Rebecca Byrne, Most of the time I think we re ok, 2025. Courtesy of Zarastro Art
Full up on female endurance, ballast against the shine, I decide to give some time to the marginalised; the businesses which operate from here permanently, those lucky enough to call the Design Centre home. Wood fit kitchens by somewhere purporting to be ‘the main company’, revolution personal training studio - some poor woman just trying to get her lengths in on the rower, startrite shoes with those feet clampers (iykyk), tailor offering made to measure 50% off wedding suits, and BRIFFA creative lawyers or creative business WIP that seem to have neither employees nor clients at this time. And, on the first floor, CUCINE LUBE, who are asking for it and opening soon.
DAY FOUR
Girls gather, men flex. Girlfriends of gallerists ask assistants to watch their bags, as they head outside for a Vogue, a vape, a FaceTime with their more conventional mates. Gallery assistant remains in place, drafting an anonymous submission to the White Pube entitled "i went to art school and all i got was temporary guardianship of this mid-range designer bag".
Toast naturalism at Rabley Gallery (Stand 12), where silk scarves are decorated with pills and cherries, and the orchid stamens themselves not quite black. At Ruup & Form (Stand G11), Henrietta Macphee's Singing Porridge (2025) peeps from behind a corner, pulsing with domestic bliss. Showing a present father figure painted on ceramic, too unrelatable for the masses to keep in direct line of view.
Some stuff you can’t believe exists, let alone is for sale. Marble scrabble and donut, folded up tube maps, opposite Sir Peter Blake studies, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant. Or within the same stand, as with the Rocco Ritchie I spy, taking bottom bunk to an Auerbach.
But a spy cannot exist on swan gin and vac-packed olives alone. I need some texture, some roughage, for all to pass through. I am not a packhorse, but a supporter of the underdog. Of any dog really, any wild thing brave enough to toss his collar in the ring. Thank god then, that for all the pomp and preening, there is some roughage to be taken in.
In the space of such predictable spectacle, I am drawn to the place where the maker’s hand can still be seen. Austin / Desmond (Stand 39) has me covered (title cards written in spider-child biro), with tender John Banton, Paul Nash woodcuts, I’ll even take a William Nicholson flower in a vase. Elizabeth Frink’s horses, amongst the Dali print riffraff at Peter Harrington. Or the Alfred Wallis boats, houses and waves at Alan Wheatley (Stand 44), however distracting the deep fake of Diana flipping the bird nearby is.
A return to the naval, away from all this show-boating; a chance for me to pull my "is this yearning for the sea a repression of sexuality or of living in a city" thesis back out again. All the way to the mould on the door of the 1st floor women’s stalls. The damp is rising, threatening to reach us all.
I feel like the little lamb in bell and bow, one of many delightfully gaudy pieces by Teddy Hansen, a social media artiste the sort of which I care to know very little - call me a purist but with sham coffee and the only advance coming by way of a rose gold swan stirrer, one has to resort to focusing on the work. At least at auction, one has the thrill of the bid, the charge of live sale. Here, you'd be lucky to get a glimpse at a calculator, and must make do instead with a panopticon of prospection. As the title of an embroidered piece by Julia Hall indicates, everyone is trying to make the best of their own situation.
But AVM, I hear you cry, enough of the astute social distillation and witty asides, who did you see and which works did you actually like?
Reader, must art be reduced to single lines on white paper, attempted by many and understood by so few? Without further ado -
NO:
Phil Shaw’s photos of hardbacks, I don’t care to knit together a mission statement from existent titles (one reads ‘paint your own masterpiece’, Phil I wish you would), these are 9k photos of books.
Patrick Caulfield's ‘cafe’ sign (Hirst spin painting next door, dumbed by association).
Plushies eating fish and chips somewhere on the second floor Tampa Bay section (although credits to the gallerist who stops my robot hand from taking a hateful picture and moving on - ‘what do you not like about it’, my brothers’ used to steal mine when I was young, she laughs, I can move on)
A piece called Inciting Incident, which is either AI or a direct copy of a Facebook profile picture from my teenage years after too many Strongbow dark fruits and choosing the thickness of my nose ring in the dark.
Dorothy Circus (Stand G15) - questionable works overall, although a great name and some lovely embossed bizz cards on show.
Several Tom & Jerry pieces, gaming chair man cave fodder, layered with Bob Dylan quotes.
Onyx Koons copies somewhere near Phaidon’s Reading Room (function loosely interpreted, plug sockets in heavy use).
2nd place annoyer to Phil Snow’s books, until I see graffiti, on canvas, in a plastic case behind glass ???
YES:
Linda Carmen drawing at England & Co (Stand 30) (the tender hand visible in their motley assortment of pieces - collage, paint, ephemera, erotic, naturist utopia of a hoard of artist-friends - John & Ruth Selby-Bigge, Roland Penrose, Lee Miller, Man Ray etc, PLUS ancient stand assistants who shuffle between their precious pieces with looks of fixed befuddlement)
The feminine blur at Blue Shop Gallery (Stand 2) (Kaja Stumpf's tryptch, Roya Bahram’s cakes, Vivien Mcdermid’s candle moon - their heart healthy radiance audible (just) over the braying Lucy & Yak tweeds of the gallerist & friends - a sign of the new style collector-gallerist model, actual friendships at the root).
Henry Miller - everything, really, from the neat duo presiding over it in soft cardigans, to the spectrum of male forms on its walls. ‘Leroy in a blanket’ by Michael Leonard, Achilles & Patroclus III (2023) by Radek Husak, Louis Fratino’s smudgy powder blue head.
Craig Simpson at Castlegate House Gallery (Stand 50), one of whom is a dead-ringer for the simpering sponsor Duke off of Moulin Rouge .
Open Doors Gallery (Stand M1) - Jennifer Latour’s wild species sculpture photographs, Wysocka/Pogo spanking series.
Some ceramics in the tactile corner (PLATFORM); Vanessa Barragão’s tuftings, mouldy mushrooms at THROWN (although it’s a NO to the high-shine loop pieces, which remind me of the gloopy vortex windows screensaver nightmares of my youth, I suppose they weren’t to know)
The tiny fart a woman lets out in the bathroom, followed by a response to the dryer as giving her ‘a Marilyn Monroe’.
DAY FIVE
Woke up with something lingering, crack of dawn, car lights through the window. LAF lurgy? Mixmediatosis? Think I’ll head to Condo instead.
AVM is a writer and art spy. More of her work can be found at Animal Vegetable Mineral on Substack.
