PETER LONDON Art in London Magazine / Gallery West-Eleven

Contemporary art is very alive in London. When you read articles on the current nexi of contemporary art you will find London at the top of the list with New York.

I recently contacted Peter London, Editor of Art in London Magazine, and manager of the West-Eleven Gallery in London. Peter has an excellent vantage point on the London contemporary art scene, and his responses during my interview of him were informative and interesting.

Can you tell me some of the history of Art in London?

"Art in London began life as a magazine called ‘West-Eleven’ - the name of our own contemporary art gallery in Notting Hill. It was conceived to promote galleries and artists living and working in Notting Hill, one of the most cultural and diverse communities in London. ‘West-Eleven’ quickly expanded to become The Art Magazine for Notting Hill, Kensington and Chelsea following demand from galleries outside our immediate vicinity, and as requests for advertising and editorial continued to arrive from further afield, it was decided to incorporate the whole of London into the magazine. This, however, necessitated a change of name as ‘West-Eleven’, sexy though it sounded, was too parochial to represent the capital as a whole."

How did your interest begin in art?

"My grandfather was a famous sculptor and inventor, and a member of The Royal Society of British Artists. Unfortunately, I have inherited none of his talent and it is fair to say that I am one of the most unartistic people you could hope to meet. Maybe that’s why I admire talent in others. I began life as an airline pilot, but the tedium of long hours and night stops in places you don’t want to be, led me to search for an easier way of making a living. I had an interest in antique furniture and barometers, and initially planned to mix it with the Bond Street Boys on the glamorous fairs circuit. However, I soon realised that far too much humping was required for my liking, not to mention transport and warehouse costs. Pictures seemed an obvious alternative. You just shove ‘em in the boot and hang ‘em on your walls. I enjoyed the camaraderie with other dealers, although it took a while for me to be taken seriously. While most dealers would arrive at a fair in their Mercedes van or Volvo estate, I would always arrive in an absurdly impractical sports coupe, stuffed to the gills with unwrapped watercolours, oil paintings, chipped frames and shards of broken glass. I never did master the transport thing. In fact I recently arrived at a fair with most of my stock crammed into an SL55."

What kinds of philosophy and goals do you have for the look and the message of Art in London?

"Our remit is to offer affordable advertising for galleries and artists. As a gallery manager myself, I realise the cost of staging exhibitions can sometimes be prohibitive. As an artist, there is not only the cost of gallery hire to be considered, but the cost of materials, invitations, transport, champagne and fancy food things, before you even begin to think about advertising. From the gallery viewpoint, paying the rent is increasingly more demanding - rates in Notting Hill have risen as much as 100% recently, and advertising naturally takes a back seat to the more immediate demands. And yet it is pointless staging an exhibition without promoting it heavily. We are not in competition with any other art publications. We simply offer a choice between being able to advertise or not."

What has been the reception for the magazine in London and beyond?

"The response from galleries and artists alike has been overwhelmingly positive. London needs its own dedicated art magazine, and the general consensus has been ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this before?’

What kind of artists and galleries or art-related organisations do you like to work with?

"Art in London encompasses all periods and movements of art in the capital. While much of it is, out of necessity, contemporary and cutting-edge, many of the capitals’s leading galleries still specialise in Renaissance Masters, Pre-Raphaelites, Impressionist and Victorian High Art, and we are just as likely to focus on Turner or Rossetti as to run an in-depth feature on the mindset of Sarah Lucas."

What other publications and online art sites do you admire?

"'Art and Auction' is probably the industry standard, although our entire advertising revenue would barely pay for a full-page ad. It is a magazine for the elite echelon of the world’s market, but also a window to an inner world that most of us can aspire to, if only in our dreams. As a gallerist, I often browse through sites such as Axis, Saatchi and Re-title, hoping to sign the next megastar. One of the newest is Degreeart.com which offers the chance to snap up new art graduates before the Tate gets a sniff. The difficulty for a small London gallery like ours is that certain individuals are in a position to create a market simply by declaring their allegiance to an artist. Talent is not a necessarily a factor. If we filled our gallery with the typical art purveyed by some of London’s leading contemporary dealers, our clients might be intrigued but would be unlikely to write us any cheques that month."

What was the most difficult problem you have encountered?

"We have an energetic young team of art journalists, most of whom are artists or gallery assistants themselves. While their writing is creative and expressive, I do sometimes tire of having to put the full stops, semi-colons, quotation marks and italics in for them; changing sentences and paragraphs so that the text flows better and running the spellchecker. Still, I would rather have inspired and creative writing from a journalist without a degree in English language, than dull, boring copy from a Professor of Punctuation."

What are your preferences in art and collecting?

"Until 2001, my knowledge of art finished around 1930. We would sell the odd Modern British piece from time to time, but essentially dealt in Victorian and Edwardian art. The New York disaster changed the face of art and antique collecting in Britain and it soon became apparent that if we were to survive in an increasingly competitive market, contemporary was the only way to go. It has been a steep and rapid learning curve, and while West-Eleven rarely sells antique works of art these days, if I am honest I would say that I still prefer a traditional Victorian landscape to a contemporary abstract."

Have you seen any trends in the art world related to art writing, publishing, exhibiting?

"The art world is full of artspeak which often verges on the absurd. We will not tolerate any convoluted art bullshit, and if a journalist sends me something that my grandmother would not have understood, I don’t waste my time attempting to decode. Depressingly, the only trend I have noticed in this area is progressively downward.

Exhibiting has changed beyond all recognition in the last five years. Rapidly rising rents, more discerning collectors and the rise of the art fair has seen at least five galleries in Notting Hill close over the last twelve months. However, amazingly enough, an even greater number have opened which is very encouraging and underscores our faith in the area as the culture capital of the UK.

Five years ago, I thought that 6000 pounds to exhibit at Claridges - the most glamorous fair in London for the non-elite - a bit of an extravagance, and I would always breathe a sigh of relief if we got out of it with our bank balance intact. Today, it is the basic price for a stand at any number of contemporary art fairs. Will Ramsay has done much to change the face of art collecting at the lower to mid-end of the spectrum. His Affordable Art Fair has grown rapidly from small beginnings to become an international brand in a very short space of time, attracting dealers and buyers by the shed load, but at the same time retaining quality, diversity and originality. Even more stellar has been the meteoric rise of The Frieze, establishing itself as the world’s premier contemporary art fair in just a few years. Between these two events, fairs such as artlondon in Chelsea and LondonArt in Islington compete for the middle ground, not to mention the more traditional Grosvenor House, BADA, LAPADA, Chelsea and Olympia Fine Art events.

With so many quality fairs to choose from, it is little wonder that many galleries prefer to spend maybe 80,000 pounds a year on stand rental rather than plough the money into a gallery that might be offering diminishing returns with every inflation-beating rate rise zapped on them by their landlords."

Do you have any forecasts for the near future on the London art scene?

"No. The contemporary market in London is controlled by just a handful of influential directors of both private and public galleries. It is effectively a cartel that is impossible to influence, and they alone will decide on who the glitterati will be patronising next year. You have a choice of either playing ‘Follow my Leader’ or going with your own judgement. Artists such as Gilbert and George, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin may not be everyone’s aesthetic ideal, but at least you can appreciate their originality. Formulaic derivatives are to be avoided at all costs.

I feel - or maybe hope - that there will eventually be a return to painting and draughtsmanship. We have already seen signs of this in the Turner Prize, and in new art movements such as The Stuckists. West-Eleven does not deal in art that cannot be hung in your living room without offending visiting vicars. Most of our relatively small stable of painters produce paintings that are contemporary yet based on sound levels of draughtsmanship. This type of work will never sell for millions, but will always find a market because thankfully collectors always buy what they like, not what some unsuspecting football or rock hero has just acquired under the guidance of some rising star’s agent."

It was a pleasure to talk with you Peter. CAG appreciates your knowledgeable take on the London contemporary art scene and the candor of your responses.

- Tia Marks

http://cagzine.com

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