Zoo Art Fair, London (England) - Gallery news: Zoo 2009

Zoo 2009 – Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain (13.10.2009)

The Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain is very pleased to endorse Swiss presence at Zoo 2009 for the third consecutive year, by assisting two galleries from Zürich and Geneva. Zoo Art Enterprises enables these galleries to make contact with professionals and institutions such as museums, curators, critics and collectors alike, providing an ideal platform to present themselves to a broad international audience.

The high costs incurred when participating in events abroad make it difficult for younger art organisations to fund their participation. The collaboration between Zoo Art Enterprises and the Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain, through which each exhibitor receives a substantial contribution towards the cost of their stand, aims to alleviate part of this financial burden, allowing the organisations to achieve the best presentation possible.

As part of its cultural and educational programme, the Swiss Cultural Fund in Britain’s mission is to engage British audiences with the very best that Swiss culture has to offer. The Fund supports every artistic genre, from music to theatre, the visual arts to performance art, and architecture to literature, enabling young as well as established artists to present themselves to the public via a wide range of cultural institutions and venues all over the United Kingdom.

The SCFB will support various cultural events in October, including the exhibition First Works: Emerging Architectural Practices of the 1960s & 70s at the AA School of Architecture, and Zürich based Cullen Art Services’ inaugural exhibition Location 1: Issa Salliander & Martina von Meyenburg at the Islington Metal Works (formerly the Double Club).

For more information please visit www.scfb.org.uk or email scfb@eda.admin.ch.

Zoo 2009 Swiss Exhibitors:

Faye Fleming & Partner (formerly ARQUEBUSE), Geneva

The gallery was first established under the name of ARQUEBUSE in September 2006, with the aim of exhibiting both emerging Swiss and international artists in a series of ground-breaking solo exhibitions. In early 2009, the gallery entered an exciting second phase of its existence under the new name ‘Faye Fleming & Partner’, with an increasingly ambitious outlook and focus on international representation for the artists we work with, helping to develop and place works with important collections and institutions internationally.

Our presentation at Zoo 2009 underlines this ambition with two major installations:

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s work is currently the focus of a solo show at the gallery in Geneva, and has recently been included in several important international exhibitions including the Seville Biennial (2006-07), the Gwangju Biennial (2008) and Flow, a major exhibition of new trends in art from the African diaspora at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY (2007). Yiadom-Boakye will be included in the upcoming book Contemporary African Art Since 1980, edited by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Akeke-Ogulu.

The installation by the Swiss artist Pauline Boudry and German artist Renate Lorenz is the UK debut of their important new work Salomania, made in collaboration with the legendary Yvonne Rainer who performs in the piece. Boudry & Lorenz will have a solo exhibition at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva in June 2010.

Mitterand+Sanz, Zürich

Mitterrand+Sanz/Contemporary Art was established in Zürich in 2007, after the Galerie Edward Mitterrand in Geneva split up into two separate entities. The second one is Mitterrand+Cramer/Fine Art in Geneva which is dedicated to art advisory and limited design.

With its recent relocation to the heart of Zürich’s most vibrant art scene, Mitterrand+Sanz is now focused on producing and exhibiting site specific projects by both young Swiss artists and emerging/mid-career international artists.

On the occasion of Zoo 2009, the gallery selected artists of their programme, who challenge with their ideas the nature of what is understood as art and express their very own construction of conceptual art through various media (drawings, paintings, photography and video). Through the transfer of works originally created for a specific space to another space, the gallery puts its own concept to the test.

Artists include Katia Bassanini, Merlin Carpenter, Claude Closky, Jonah Freeman, Daniel Lefcourt, Koka Ramishvili and Gibb Slife.