WARMING TO FRIEZE

Amanda Sharp graduated during an exciting time in British art. In the early '90s the scene was small but vibrant, and she and Matthew Slotover spotted a gap in the market for a decent magazine to represent the diverse talent. They called it Frieze.

One of only a tiny handful of international art titles, their pet project is now regarded as Europe's leading publication for contemporary art and culture. Not bad, really, considering it was started on a simple, optimistic impulse by a couple of young graduates.

"We'd just left university, perhaps without understanding that starting a publication is a difficult thing to do," recalls Amanda. "We just thought, great - let's do a magazine." Naive enthusiasm paid off, helped by the advent of desktop publishing and a little help from friends with computers and offices to spare. It's this kind of self-motivated aspiration that sets pioneers apart from the rest of the bunch.

Frieze mushroomed from a small, home-grown, London-based publication into a groundbreaking global institution, spawning the Capital's first major international Art Fair in 2003. Every autumn, the increasingly high-profile event joins hundreds of the world's premier contemporary galleries, curators, dealers, collectors and artists. It's a fantastic platform for British creativity, placing it boldly on the international map.

"London's one of the world's great art cities, but probably the only one that didn't have an international Art Fair," she points out. "It seemed obvious, so we thought let's do it ourselves. Strangely at first there seemed to be resistance from the British galleries that we contacted. Luckily we managed to pull them all round."

And pull it all off. Quite successfully. October 2006 saw the fourth Frieze Art Fair, with over 63,000 visitors and coverage from thousands of journalists from 24 visiting countries - spanning six continents. An appropriately international stir caused by global-thinking company.

"Right from the beginning, the magazine was very international in its focus," Amanda stresses. "Even at that point we were very aware that art is an international business; it's very parochial looking at just one part of the world. We were excited about British art, but looked outwards from there."

"Art talks about universal issues - you can't just take a little part out of from it," she argues. "We've taken those guiding principles forward and sustained them through the magazine and the Fair. And it's paid off: we're one of the leading contemporary art magazines in the world, and arguably one of the top three international Fairs. It's a great position to be in."

So is British art itself positioned so greatly in the global scheme of things? Amanda acknowledges its place: "British art is absolutely one of the cornerstones of the current international scene," she declares. "If you're interested in contemporary art, then you can't ignore what's happening in Britain - just as you can't ignore Germany, America, France or Italy."

So part of Frieze's delight is to put British art on the global creative stage. But does it have a particular role to play? Are there defining characteristics? "British art often contains an element of humour," muses Amanda. "Sometimes it's absurd, sometimes it can be dark humour. Perhaps this is from our history of the class system - people telling you that you can't get on in Britain; that you have to be in your place."

"People who are creative and inspired don't want to be fettered by that, so they often find slightly odd routes to do what they want to do. The obvious American idea of 'I can do anything' isn't instilled yet in British culture, so perhaps creativity comes from people who are slightly off-the-wall in their approach."

"There is a prevalence of thirty-somethings in British art that came through Thatcher's Britain; who battled against hard odds," she reflects. "These people have paved the way. They injected the industry with the notion of grabbing those chances, and making things happen."

"What you do see now in Britain is more of a growing belief in British art; that Britain is one of the great art nations. There's a growing awareness that it's now possible to make art in any medium, and British artists have been taking on works of scale in recent years. People realise that they can do anything - it's just the ideas that matter, and that's exciting."

As a world of ideas and creativity, the art scene is by nature a perpetually evolving domain, but such brilliant fluidity needs a solid infrastructure to sustain it. Fortunately, as Amanda points out, Britain's not lacking: "One of the reasons that our art market is very strong is an incredible group of commercial galleries. Ten years ago we only had three or four commercial galleries of international calibre. But now London alone has thirty or forty."

"These galleries are really industrious in cultivating artists and working on their behalf," she enthuses. "Of course, art always comes first - if the artists hadn't been there in the first place, the galleries wouldn't have developed. But there's a strong kernel at the heart of Britain, made up of good artists, good galleries, great museums and also a developing local collector group."

"One of the biggest changes in the industry in the last ten years has been that smaller collectors and buyers are getting involved. We see this every year at the Fair; more and more British collectors - and others - want to buy art."

It's all part of what Amanda sees as a broader interest in contemporary art than ever before. More of us are attending exhibitions, the readership of Frieze magazine is growing and the Fair's popularity is blossoming - numbers swell by 35 percent year on year, while Yearbook sales double.

"More and more people are interested in art in and of itself," she observes. "Looking at the media, there are stories on artists that general newspapers cover before the art magazines. People know what's going on in the art world in broader culture, and that provides a stronger basis for art in every way."

So with a healthy infrastructure in place and a growing interest amongst the general population, it seems that the future is bright for both Frieze and British art. "Art is subject to influence from other broader spheres such as economics, just as any other industry is," Amanda suggests.

"If the world economy continues to be strong, then we should see gentle growth. We should see more galleries open; maybe more people going to art school; more people buying art."

"We've seen extraordinary audience figures leaping up year on year for the Fair, and that's exciting because a lot of those people are simply visitors - not just the core audience of collectors or gallery owners. There are a lot of people who just find it interesting, and who want to learn more about it."

"So I think the signs are good. Of course, if we have a worldwide recession then the art world will suffer like every other world, but what we've got now is very robust and would re-build itself even more strongly."

The solid backbone of the British art industry has provided a durable frame upon which the artists can display their creations, but it is, of course, the perennial human creativity that is the dazzling flesh on these bones.

"It's necessarily a very active world because there are always new ideas being placed on the table," remarks Amanda. "There are always new, interesting people coming through. I don't think that in the next couple of years you're going to see any specific big changes in any particular types of art. What you will see is distinct artists come to prominence."

"The scene isn't really made up of certain trends, but talented people. Work that catches national and international attention is something that is completely innovative. A good piece of art, really, is something that you haven't seen before."

Text: Fiona Ferguson
Photography: Courtesy of Frieze