The Chelsea Art Fair at Chelsea Old Town Hall

The Chelsea Art Fair is a well-established boutique event now in its 21^st year. Set in the elegant space of Chelsea Old Town Hall, a curated selection of hand-picked art galleries are showing a diverse range of work. The fair places an emphasis on quality; galleries are provided with strict guidelines concerning artists, media and edition numbers for prints. The event is unusual in that it encourages galleries to exhibit sculptural works, providing them with enough space to do so. This makes a nice change from some of the other London art fairs, where sculpture is usually conspicuously absent.

Many of the works are reasonably priced considering how established the artists are. The fair also has an association with the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity, so it’s nice to know that some of your pennies will be going to a good cause if you decide to splash out. The environment is friendly (if rather “Chelsea”) and the gallery owners are very happy to talk to visitors and provide information and advice. Several of the galleries are not London-based, so the fair offers a good opportunity to discover some of the artists represented by these out-of-towners.

There is a particularly strong selection if you’re looking for landscape painting, for example, the Art World gallery (usually based in Cornwall) is showing several beautiful works by Simon Wilde, which feature imaginary coastal scenes painted with a sense of luminous light. Elsewhere, the Lighthouse Gallery, another Cornish establishment, features brooding seascapes by Mark Paprowski. Another striking work on show is a painting by Belgian artist Johan de Fre, represented by Panter and Hall. The composition is simple, with three antique glasses sitting on a marble countertop, but the effect recalls a Dutch Renaissance masterpiece.

Whilst you won’t find anything groundbreaking or overly conceptual here, there are some beautiful pieces on show. From striking landscapes to elegant sculptures, the Chelsea Art Fair offers a range of tempting options if you’re looking to make a solid investment in a work of art by an established artist.

Anna Souter

Chelsea Art Fair is at Chelsea Old Town Hall from 21^st to 24^th April 2016, for further information visit here.