Affordable Art Beijing

As Affordable Art Beijing HQ prepares to throw open its doors for a hotly anticipated preview party this weekend, co-founder Tom Pattinson chatted with CreativeHunt about his highly successful platform, prized by both budget-minded buyers and emerging creatives alike. Regularly counting big name artists in its content and more recently art market professionals in its audience, AAB has not only succeeded in smashing the elitism of your average art fair, but has also firmly positioned itself as an important showcase for both Chinese and foreign talent that will continue to turn heads at this year's Spring time edition.

A long-term, on-off resident of the city, Pattinson reminisces that in 2005 on his arrival back in China "art was still in the elite spectrum and quite expensive. In those days the galleries in 798 was still very much studio spaces and artists actually lived there. The first galleries were beginning to open and a year on it had already started to get very commercial."

Pattinson soon realized he was not alone in not being unable to fork out the eye-watering, five or six figure price tags seemingly all Chinese contemporary art around him demanded, and so, with friend and former galleriest Tamsin Roberts, decided to put on a show, with a refreshing emphasis on affordability.

"It was April 2006 and we had about 60 artists and 300 art works. We borrowed an art gallery in 798 and did the whole thing very much on a shoestring. To our great surprise, there were hundreds of people outside queuing to get in, and we sold huge amount of work – there were almost fights at the cashier tills!"


Wang Jingwa (left) and Yang Rui (right)


Zhang Shiying (left) and Guo Kaijun (right)

During that first art fair foray, the maximum price for work was just 8,000rmb. Encouraged, Pattinson decided to repeat the the format in 2007, this time with an upper price limit of 10,000rmb, more artists and more artworks. And now, in 2011 and its sixth edition, AAB still adheres to its original and founding philosophy.

"The whole purpose of doing it was two fold – one was to allow 'normal' people to enter the art market and buy art: people like me – youngish, some disposable income but not art collectors or experts by any means, and who just want to have something to fill their walls with. We had – and still have today – works as cheap as just a couple of hundred kwai.... it's about taking away some of the elitism and getting people interested in buying art at a ground roots level.

Artists want to get involved because they obviously realize that this is a way for them to be seen by many, many people and to sell their art very quickly and directly. It can also give them the first or second step on a ladder that could lead to much bigger and better things".

Another appeal for artists is the opportunity to dictate their own prices, with just a very small margin added by AAB. "It's a situation the artists feel comfortable with: it's a lot more transparent than other art events where organizers see what the artist wants and then double it, triple, quadruple... It upsets some artists as it skews their value".

Thanks to the fair's very low overheads, AAB attracts both emerging and big name artists more used to seeing their work sold for lucrative prices in established galleries. Sheng Qi, for example, has participated almost every year since the fair's inception, setting prices at just one or two thousand dollars, as opposed to the twenty – fifty thousand his work usually demands. "There's several high profile artists who take part who have grown beyond our financial boundaries, but they still want to be involved, partly out of an appreciation of where they came from but also to help support other artists and help spread the word," Tom explains.


Xiao Hanqiu萧涵秋 Self Portrait

Joining these art world luminaries are lesser known artists such as Ma Weihong. Not represented by a gallery, she has few outlets to sell her work apart from her studio. For her, one of the appeals of AAB is its sheer volume: at last year's event, Pattinson sold eight pieces of the Shanxi artist's work, totalling an impressive 80,000rmb in just one day.

Indeed, the challenge for Pattinson and his team each year is never finding work to sell; rather it's sifting through the five thousand or so entries for not just quality but also a range of prices, mediums and appeal. "If it's not good value then we won't choose it. We've done this for five or six years and I'm certainly more aware of what's likely to sell through having a clearer idea of who our audience is".

Artists are also invited to submit work, and Pattinson and his team regularly trawl the likes of Tsinghua and CAFA for talented students, as well as Songzhuang artist village. Although predominantly Chinese, foreign artists participate too, notably Beijing-based photographers Oak Taylor-Smith and Martin Barnes.

"What we're trying to get away from is this idea of art solely as an investment; rather it should be about aesthetics, we want to get back to the basics of art – something to hang on your wall, look at every day and just enjoy."

To do just that, head over to AAB's offices in Babaokeng Hutong this weekend for a sneak preview of just some of the works to be featured in this year's fair, all helped along with beers and a BBQ. With works to match most tastes, sizes and most importantly, budgets, there's sure to be something to whet the appetite.





*************************************************************************************************************************************
March 25: 6pm onwards (including beer and chuan'r)
March 26: 12pm – 6pm

6 Babaokeng Hutong, Beixinqiao, Dongcheng District / 北京市东城区东四十四条八宝坑胡同6号

Affordable Art Beijing will take place on 14 & 15 May at 798 Space in 798 Art District

AAB's open-house event takes place as part of JUE festival. For further info and to see the rest of the programme, click here