11 October 2023 The new initiative picked works from Frieze art fair to enter into public collections.
A new fund of at least £40,000 ($49,000) has been launched for the Arts Council Collection to acquire work by early career and overlooked U.K.-based artists at Frieze London. The artists selected today for the fund’s inaugural year were Julianknxx, Anne Tallentire, Mark Corfield-Moore, and Tanoa Sasraku.
The new Frieze fund, which has been made available by a select group of patrons, including Tala Cingillioglu, Zelie Walker-Noble, Suling Mead, and the Thornton family, comes at a time when the U.K.’s culture sector has faced catastrophic cuts in public funding. London was hit particularly hard when the annual funding for 2023-26 funnelled money into regional institutions.
“Following the Arts Council’s devastating cuts last year, philanthropic initiatives are more necessary than ever,” a spokesperson for Frieze told The Telegraph when the fund was announced. The selection committee scouting the booths for up-and-coming artists at this year’s Frieze London included the Hayward Gallery’s director Ralph Rugoff, the writer and editor for Frieze magazine Vanessa Peterson, the artist John Walter, and program director at Jerwood Arts, Harriet Cooper.
The Sierra Leonian artist Julianknxx’s is talk of the town in London at the moment, with his moving image work Chorus in Rememory of Flights (2023) that explores the Black Diasporic experience currently being exhibited at the Barbican’s Curve gallery until February 11, 2024. His work is also included in A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern through January 14, 2024. His new film Black Room (2023), presented by Edel Assanti gallery in the Galleries sector, was quickly snapped up by the collection’s acquisition committee.
Patrons supporting the fund include Tala Cingillioglu from Cingilli Collection, Zelie Walker-Noble, independent art advisor and collector, Suling Mead, board member for Contemporary Art Society, and the Thornton family. Mead called the fund an important supporter of “early career and overlooked artists” that enables them “to become a part of its history and future.”
Founded in 1946, the Arts Council Collection is a national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art with a focus on supporting promising emerging artists.
