Art collectors to converge at Cape Town Convention centre for the Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2024

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

It is that time of the year when art collectors will converge in The Cape Town International Convention Centre to sample the best of African creativity,that tells the rich stories of the continent and its different societies.

This leg of the leading continental art fair, the eleventh edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Africa’s largest art fair, takes place from 16 – 18 February 2024 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

This edition comes at a time when contemporary art from Africa is holding its own in the world, as its artists continue to hold their own among the world’s best.

Since art collectors focused on African contemporary art a few years ago, the gaze has steadied as some of the continent’s innovative artists continue to make news globally, with their art fetching good prizes at auction houses as well as at art fairs around the world.

Therefore this year’s Investec Cape Town Art Fair, is well positioned to capitalize on the now steady African art market, and therefore the fair is expected again to attract collectors interested in contemporary art from Africa.

Online art publication, Artprice.com has closely followed the performance on African artists on the main auction houses, and has reported that although caution prevailed when it came to Africa buying African contemporary artists, some of them did exceedingly well at the recent Christie’es November 2023 auction sale.

“November 7 generated satisfactory results, but nothing exceptional. The forty lots brought in ‘only’ $107.45 million against a combined high estimate of $143 million. However, the sale did produce remarkable results for the female artists in the prestigious catalog, notably the young British woman of Nigerian descent Jadé FADOJUTIMI (1993) who set a new record at nearly $1.7 million for her painting A Thistle Throb (2021), a record that was subsequently beaten the following week at Phillips (Quirk my mannerism (2021) sold for $1.9 million). This dazzlingly successful artist (she was only put up for auction in 2020) has been asserting herself all the more firmly in the upper echelons of the market since integrating the powerful Gagosian gallery in the summer of 2022.

Another auction record was well reported in the press: back in October, Julie MEHRETU’s large untitled diptych (Untitled (2011), 183 x 487 cm) set a new record for an artist of African origin when Sotheby’s sold the work in Hong Kong for $9.3 million. In 2015, the same work fetched $2.85 million at Christie’s New York, so its price increased by 227% in just 8 years. A month later, the artist confirmed his price increase by exceeding $10 million for the first time at Sotheby’s (Walkers With the Dawn and Morning, November 15, 2023). Of Ethiopian origin and a resident of the United States since early childhood, Julie Mehretu, like Jade Fadojutimi, createslarge-scale abstract works that are particularly in touch with the issues of our time. The recent success of these two artists suggests that there is high-end demand for cutting-edge Contemporary abstraction, as well as for the ‘black portraiture’ that has flooded auction rooms in recent years,” Artprice.com reports.

For this year the curatorial theme for the 2024 edition pf Investec Cape Town Art Fair is Unbound, focusing on emerging and ‘unbound’ voices.  Art becomes a compelling catalyst amid global challenges. It offers individuals a platform for expression, a space where diverse voices can be heard. Unbound serves as a conduit for exploring alternative possibilities and breaking free from constrictive narratives.

This edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair sees the city of Cape Town play a far more significant role in foregrounding the Art Fair’s activities and artists for its local and international audience of collectors and institutions. As Fair director Laura Vincenti puts it, “The city’s geography is an integral part of Investec Cape Town Art Fair’s success. Cape Town is a vibrant cultural hub, with a supportive community. It is very attractive to international collectors, with the great combination of diverse, cutting-edge art and a favourable exchange rate. This year the Fair continues its work of providing an annual platform for artists, galleries, curators, museums, cultural institutions, collectors, and art enthusiasts to connect and interact in the name of art. The Fair is also becoming known for facilitating meaningful dialogue, education and far-reaching interaction around contemporary African (and global) art.”

Growing a contemporary art ecosystem on the continent

Having celebrated its first decade this year, Investec Cape Town Art Fair is now well established as one of Cape Town’s key international attractions. The Fair is strategically positioned as the leading art event on the African continent, connecting contemporary art from Africa to the markets in Europe, the US, and the rest of the world. This means that the Fair offers a unique platform for emerging contemporary galleries, artists and ideas from markets outside of the traditional centres of art power and those from the African continent, to interact on an equal footing. With significant and growing international participation, the Fair is an important forum for setting curatorial and collecting trends to understand the African art market’s direction and growth.

The 2024 edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair will again bring together Africa’s leading galleries as well as cutting-edge galleries from Europe and the USA, offering an unparalleled opportunity to view and acquire high-quality, contemporary artworks. Visitors to the Fair can expect an extensive public programme both at the Fair as well as in and around the City of Cape Town.

Architectural and conceptual design for the Fair layout

The physical layout of the Fair takes advantage of Fair Director’s Laura Vincenti’s experience and expertise as an architect. It is laid out in blocks related to the curatorial concepts and thematics of the Fair and the artists being showcased, rather than in the more conventional rows of exhibiting booths. Each curated section that is of interest to visitors will therefore be in the same space for ease of access.

Extending the Fair’s reach into the city

Watch out too for Investec Cape Town Art Fair-related programming from all the leading Cape Town-based galleries, museums and institutions, who will open thought-provoking shows and host engaging programmes throughout the city over the period of the Fair.  Among other events, there will be a major public art and urban intervention in the scenic inner-city area of the Bo-Kaap, as the city truly becomes one of the most attractive and interesting art destinations anywhere in the world.

●         The MAIN section comprises exhibiting galleries from around the world, many from the rest of the African continent. Exhibitor numbers are steadily increasing year-on-year, and international exhibitors are now getting back to pre-pandemic levels.

●         Tomorrows/ Today is a curated section that has grown exponentially and expanded to twelve exhibitors. Renowned Spanish curator for this section, Dr. Mariella Franzoni, provides a platform for emerging and underrepresented artists and acts as a forecast of future relevant practices and ideas. The section will feature twelve selected solo show projects, with a cash prize going to the artist with the highest quality presentation. Titled Inhabiting the Wild, the 2024 edition explores and reimagines the concept of wildness through artistic imagination. The concept extends the idea of liberation by seeking to bring together diverse voices through this renewed sense of the wild, inspired by queer, feminist, decolonial and materialist studies, and embracing both overt and subtle forms of political dissidence.

●         The SOLO section is curated by Cape Town based writer, critic and curator Sean O’Toole. Titled Loopholes in the Walls of Darkness, it focuses on painting.Notwithstanding astonishing advances in digital art, painting, though a solitary practice, continues to set the pace, in galleries and museums, as well as at market. The ten most expensive artworks sold anywhere in 2022 were all paintings. Figurative painting remains the medium du jour of commerce and a hallmark of the zeitgeist circa now. O’Toole states “But painting has rubbed up against disinterest and neglect so many times, and so is a medium aware of its own obsolescence and mortality. This might account for painting’s elastic form and unravelling edges, its infiltration into adjacent media of sculpture and photography, as well as spill over into performance, film and digital practices’.

●         GENERATIONS is the fair’s newest section curated by Natasha Becker from the United States and South African curator Amogelang Maledu, an intergenerational curatorial conversation between the two. The project celebrates artists who are at different stages in their careers and instigates cross-generational conversations among them. The project is intended to foreground artists who address the flaws of the past and reconstruct a future that utilises the talents and creativity of all generations.

●         An expanded ALT section returns this year. The section is dedicated to projects that reflect the many ways in which the art world must adapt to circumstance. Young, non-traditional art project spaces can showcase their artists in a non-conventional way through an installation that offers a fresh interpretation of the anti-booth. The section invites dialogue around unconventional, non-traditional modes of practice and thinking and intends to break away from the usual art fair environment, bringing in a diversity of emerging voices.

Other returning sections to the main Fair include EDITIONS for showcasing prints and multiples by various artists, as well as space for art magazines, journals and publications, and specialised educational institutions offering a window into the wider art ecosystem. 

Participating International Galleries:

Afriart Gallery (Kampala, Uganda)

A.Gorgi Gallery (Tunis, Tunisia)

Amasaka Gallery (Masaka, Uganda)

Ana Mas Projects (Barcelona, Spain)

Anna Laudel (Istanbul, Turkey)

ARTCO Gallery (Berlin (Aachen), Germany)

artHARARE (Harare, Zimbabwe)

Bode (Berlin, Germany)

Borna Soglo Gallery (Cotonou, Benin)

C24 Gallery (New York, United States of America)

Galerie Caroline O’Breen (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Circle Art Gallery (Nairobi, Kenya)

First Floor Gallery Harare (Harare, Zimbabwe)

Galerie Alain Gutharc (Paris, France)

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire)

Galerie EIGEN + ART (Leipzig, Berlin, Germany)

Galleria Anna Marra (Rome, Italy)

Gallerie Eric Dupont (Paris, France)

Galleria Giovanni Bonelli (Milan, Italy)

Gregor Podnar (Vienna, Austria)

Iadema Studio (Tallinn, Estonia)

Jonathan Carver Moore (San Francisco, United States of America)

Le Violon Bleu (Tunis Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisia)

LIS10 Gallery (Arezzo, Italy)

Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art (Cairo, Egypt)

MOVART (Luanda, Angola)

Nil Gallery (Paris, France)

No Man’s Art Gallery (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Ora Loapi (Gaborone, Botswana)

Osart Gallery (Milan, Italy)

P420 (Bologna, Italy)

Post Gallery (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

Reiners Contemporary Art (Marbella, Spain)

Rele Gallery (Lagos, Nigeria)

Samuel Maenhoudt Gallery (Knokke, Belgium)

Shazar Gallery (Naples, Italy)

Suburbia Contemporary (Granada, Spain)

The Bridge Gallery (Issy-les-Moulineaux, France)

Participating Galleries in South Africa:

131 A Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa)

16 on Lerotholi  (Cape Town, South Africa)

99 Loop Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa)

Art Formes (Cape Town, South Africa)

Artist Proof Studio (Johannesburg, South Africa)

ArtThrob (Cape Town, South Africa)

Barnard Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa)

Berman Contemporary (Johannesburg, South Africa)

blank (Cape Town, South Africa)

Christopher Moller Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa)

CHURCH Projects (Cape Town, South Africa)

Dale Sargent Fine Art (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Daor Contemporary (Johannesburg, South Africa)

EBONY/CURATED (Cape Town,Franschhoek, South Africa)

Eclectica Contemporary (Cape Town, South Africa)

Everard Read (Cape Town, Franschhoek, Johannesburg, South Africa and London, UK)

Gallery MOMO (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg, Cape Town, South Africa, London, UK and New York, USA)

Guns & Rain (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Kalashnikovv Gallery (Johannesburg, South Africa)

KZNSA Gallery (Durban, South Africa)

Legacy (Cape Town, South Africa)

Loft Editions (Cape Town, South Africa)

RESERVOIR (Cape Town, South Africa)

Riaan Bolt Antiques (Johannesburg, South Africa)

SMAC Gallery (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Stellenbosch, South Africa)

South Atlantic Press (Cape Town, South Africa)

Southern Guild (Cape Town, South Africa)

Stevenson (Cape Town, Johannesburg, South Africa and Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

The Melrose Gallery (Johannesburg, South Africa)

THK Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa)

Under The Aegis (Cape Town, South Africa)

Untitled (Cape Town, South Africa)

Vault Research (Cape Town, South Africa)

Vela Projects (Cape Town, South Africa)

WALL (Cape Town, South Africa)

WHATIFTHEWORLD (Cape Town, South Africa)

WORLDART (Cape Town, South Africa)

The Investec Cape Town Art Fair in numbers:

There will be 115 exhibitors represented by 24 countries both on the African continent as well as internationally, with over 375 exhibiting artists made up of 54 different nationalities from across the globe, showcasing artworks in over thirty art forms.

The details:

●         The eleventh Investec Cape Town Art Fair will run from 16 to 18 February at the Cape Town International Conference Centre from 11h00 to 19h00.

●         Tickets can be purchased via the Webtickets link on www.investeccapetownartfair.co.za