Why not? The place doesn’t seem jammed with jet setters and buyers, but it’s nonetheless a pleasant gathering. Besides, the more the merrier and nobody will be cold. As Frieze Art Fair packed up in autumn with its circus of collateral events and entertainment, we were left a little exhausted and bewildered, like after having given in to a chocolate craving. After all that, London’s art scene here in the east has felt a bit like a comforting digestive where coordinates are set up once again, and everything falls into its ordinary routine — there are the First Thursday openings, there are the big group shows, the free beers… 

There is a strong prevalence of recent graduates and students from the roster of well-trodden London art schools, which is no revelation for this long-standing annual exhibition. The issue of these potent institutions (i.e. the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths College) remaining at the center of the discourse lingers well beyond the attempts to re-enable regional production. While there is no prevalent political trend to be recognized through the display, there is an obvious consensus in the research of a particular and individual style, which might be an effect of academic mentoring.

Apparently there was much ‘bad art’ to delve through before obtaining this comparatively compact group of works — leaving the jury with mixed feelings between the faithlessly desperate and the sincerely confused. 

Yet at each edition of this show one wonders what aim it is trying to achieve — given the proliferation of degree shows, open studios, mid-term exhibitions, post-degree shows and so on: in the catalogue, the New Contemporaries Chair Sacha Craddock states that it is to give freedom to the artists from the habits and micro-cosmos of the art school. It’s true that a set of very influential personalities has passed through New Contemporaries before reaching global recognition, both as artists and as selectors: Lali Chetwynd, Mathieu Copeland, Babak Ghazi, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Bob and Roberta Smith. It can be seen as a point of transition, but there doesn’t seem to be a particularly relevant market assault fostered by the local galleries. The artists seem to take it very cautiously yet positively/philosophically: the myth of the career-turn thanks to one single golden ticket seems to have become a little old-fashioned although all tutors recommend applying: if you can take the bureaucracy of the whole process, the application forms and the pre-selections (which, by the way, represent the first natural selection to get into grad school) that per se are enough to discourage the less organized, “it's always worth giving it a go” — said most of the artists I talked to, but the expectations aren't disproportionate to the event. 

Maybe we are getting rid of the careerist-artists prototype? 

It’s unnecessary to make any definitive statement with this show, and maybe one would be missing out on the fun if one were to try: so for now, why not?! Just give it a go, and we will see for the rest next year.