Russian and Oriental Art Fair ' 10 

The catalogue essay for the fair became a detailed and deliberate labour of love that lead to my wanting, beyond writing, to engage with the artists that best represents the diorama of India, the Middle East and my growing interest in the emerging contemporary art scene in Bangladesh. Without the routine of a more established gallery, ARTATT comes to the Russian, Eastern and Oriental Art Fair as a collision of the great and good of what I have in my vision currently, as a consequence I have spent the last four months corresponding, contacting and procrastinating over what is possible and profitable for my involvement in this art fair of much claim and notoriety. 

Samendra Raj Singh  Blood Sweat Sprangle 

ARTATT’s first and most significant inclusion in the fair is the inclusion of works by Delhi based artist Probir Gupta, having exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery with twenty five of his contemporaries for the Empire Strikes Back and showing with Nature Morte in Berlin and Delhi. Gupta is an established and much celebrated artist of the sub-continent who studied in Kolkata and has the political gusto of someone like Richard Hamilton.These works are reflective of his time as Hamilton’s have been decade upon decade. Included in the fair art are rarely seen watercolours that demonstrate Probir’s impulsive ability to create scene of brilliant abstraction with episodes of wondrous reality. Included with Gupta, I have a striking new acquisition Blood, Sweat and Spangle by Samaraendra Singh Raj; engaged in the decorative and the destructive visions that appear to manifest themselves from his tormented mind.   

Mariam Amni Winter Lullaby 

Emerging photographers, Shumon Ahmed and Khaled Hasan, both of whom are from Bangladesh, are part of a new wave of profitable practitioners of the urban complexity and fragility of their turbulent country. Shumon Ahmed was recently included in the recent Whitechapel Gallery exhibition Where Three Dreams Cross, 150 years of photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, using photography to rewrite their cultural histories as a thoroughly engaging protest against the ignominy of belonging to a country branded a disaster and geographical catastrophe. Ahmed and Hasan have conceived of works that are as challengingly absorbing as anything from the photo-galleries in London and they are of a generation in Bangladesh that are at the forefront of something radical and rewarding, as they seek international recognition for their printed matter. Additional works confirmed for the ARTATT stand is Vinita Khanna Hassard, a photographer and sculptor residing on the periphery of the contemporary art scene with a beautiful sensitivity for visual aesthetics.    

Vinita Khanna Hassard Gathering Likeness

ARTATT has obtained significant works from the Middle East and Iran; Maryam Amini’s Phillip Guston styled coloured canvases of biomorphic forms wrestling with their preserve morality. The arresting indignity of Shirin Fakim’s sculptural forms of Tehran prostitutes seated as figures in loose configurations and Morteza Zahedi’s child-like reproductions of indecipherable figures, toned and tanned, all eager to gesticulate their physical prowess; that are all as a consequence of a sustained research interest and boundless correspondence with Iranian art specialists Maria Vega, based here in London.  With everything present there is a real urgency to introduce something engaging that pulls back the cultural significance of the new world. It is fundamental to my involvement in this year’s art fair to introduce a board spectrum of works that balances established artists with more emerging ones. 

Affordable Art Fair ' 10

ART ATT is pleased to present a vibrant collection of contemporary works for this year’s Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park, London. In collaboration with some of the leading graduates of contemporary art together with established artists from the Middle East, we have drawn from two leading areas of interest for a rewarding curatorial vision for the 2010 Art Fair. ART ATT is a newly conceived of contemporary art arena that is more temporary and response to each of its independent projects than it is grounded by the routine of a gallery space. Our involvement in this year’s Affordable Art Fair has come about due to our expanding interest in rewarding a new audience with leading contemporary works of art at affordable prices. As founder and proprietor of ART ATT, London, I have nurtured a thriving interest in contemporary works of art for over two decades that has driven and delivered these original works to this year’s art fair and we are truly enthused to be able to draw together a beautifully animated collection of works by some of the leading generation of artists and illustrators of our time.

ART ATT’s first inclusion in the AAFair is Rob Nicol who has illustrated and exhibited extensively in London since leaving the RCA in 2008. Nicol has the divine ability to articulate something of the dark impulsive irreverence that feeds upon our idle imagination and therefore his works read like wonderful accidents from a private mind. Afsoon Hayley is Iranian born and British based, having grown up in Tehran, moving to San Francisco before settling in London, Hayley’s work draws on a myriad of cultural ideas that are as amusing as they are hugely telling of the tense cultural idiosyncrasies, that have become by accident and birth, integral to her life and her works.

Slade graduate Claire Dorsett is another artist playing with aesthetics like a child looking over the animated world for the first time. Dorsett has a confident ability to capture something of the playful will of our collective intelligence. Painting big brash works that recall Canadian painter Phillip Guston, Dorsett is as comfortable with grand scale as she is with smaller works that confided her to impulsive sketches. Katherine Hardy graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008 and as an illustrator and artist has quickly conceived of quite an impressive portfolio of images that demonstrate her ability to visualise simple anecdotal ideas in a similar vein to celebrated British artist and academic Michael Craig-Martin. Striking colours and simplified forms are the integral ingredients of Hardy’s simple snapshot images of ever-day objects in unusual settings.

Iranian artist Morteza Zahedi is a hugely precious talent, produces delicious images of muscle bound men posturing for an adoring audience. Each of the works becomes more and more amusing for their absurdity; yet for all their comical pleasure Zahedi’s works allude to a greater social culture of disaffected men seeking an identity in the unrecognised sub-culture of body-building. Slade College graduate Maxwell Wade works with a whimsical appetite for absurd phenomena’s that has bird boxes resting on their side in an apocalyptic landscape; a Giorgio de Chirico styled landscape of patterned forms delineated by a distinct coloured palette. Emerging photographer, Shumon Ahmed, practicing from Dhaka, was included in the recent Whitechapel Gallery exhibition Where Three Dreams Cross, 150 years of photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ahmed uses photography to record a new history whilst rewriting its past. For AAF Ahmed’s ‘London’ series proves to be a beautifully conceived work that is shown first here.

On the occasion of the eleventh Affordable Art Fair, ART ATT, as detailed, has drawn together a spirited body of works that will enliven and illuminate any given space. For ART ATT, driven by an interest for art writing, curating contemporary works and an art consultancy, the 2010 Battersea Art Fair is an occasion to showcase works that are as affordable as they are wonderfully original.