Dear Greg, is it really worth visiting art fairs anymore?

Dear Greg,

As a collector, is it really worth visiting art fairs anymore? Between the crowds, the noise, and the Instagrammable booths, I sometimes wonder if I’m getting anything useful from them. Are fairs still a good place to discover serious work, or is it smarter to look elsewhere?

There’s a particular kind of fatigue that hits at around 2:30 on Day One of an art fair. You’ve eaten an expensive sandwich in an overgrown tent, and you’ve avoided or been ignored by a dozen gallerinas, and now you’re staring at a large, peach-coloured canvas trying to work out if it’s brilliant or if your brain is quietly melting behind your eyes. This is art fair snow-blindness: too much visual input, too little oxygen, and the creeping suspicion that everything is beginning to look like everything else.

And yet, I love them. There’s still something thrilling about the art fair – the sheer density of work, the concentrated energy and the brief sense that you’re at the hot centre of something. I look forward to them, but I also say to collectors: let me go so you don’t have to. Because the reality is, unless you’re in it for the experience (and there’s no shame in that – it’s a bit like going to the Chelsea Flower Show with no intention of buying a rose bush), art fairs are a chaotic and unkind place to look at art seriously.

That doesn’t mean they’re worthless. The good ones – the Friezes, Art Basels, Liste etc. – are packed with sharp galleries and serious work, but you need stamina and a kind of visual filter to tune out the noise. And perhaps more importantly, you need to know what kind of work you’re seeing, because art fair work isn’t always an artist’s best work.

In the past, fairs were where galleries showed what they hadn’t sold yet, so if a major artist had a piece still available, it often meant that no one else had wanted it. More recently, the pendulum has swung the other way: galleries often require artists to make work specifically for the fair. Which sounds good, fresh work!, until you realise that deadlines, booth dimensions, and market pressures are rarely the best conditions for creativity. It’s not uncommon for artists to produce fair-specific work with one eye on what might sell fast, and even when the results are strong, there’s often a trace of compromise.

Years ago, I had a sell-out show in Japan and they asked me to repeat the formula, to make another batch of the same kind of work for a follow-up show just six months later. I did it, but my heart wasn’t in it, and it really showed. That’s the danger of making to order. Sometimes it works, but often it doesn’t.

So, what’s the alternative? Well, not the high street. If you’re browsing chain galleries selling neon graffiti Mickey Mouses at £12,000 a pop, then no, you’re not looking at contemporary art. You’re buying decoration. Ditto for the sort of shopfront gallery that has a framing studio out the back and a rack of Porsche-themed screen prints above the till. Fine if you like them. But don’t confuse them with contemporary art – that is, work that is in thoughtful dialogue with the culture it’s made in, the history it comes from, and the future it’s reaching towards.

What about open studios? Hit and miss, but sometimes great. They’re not guaranteed to show you the best new work, but they do give you a glimpse into the thinking space of the artist, and that’s always worth something. Just don’t expect every visit to be a revelation. It’s a bit like going foraging: mostly mushrooms, occasionally treasure.

If you want to get a bit more strategic, look at which London galleries (or Marseille, Essen, Sheffield, wherever you are) are showing at the interesting end of the art fair circuit, and then go and see what they’re doing back home. A young gallery’s solo booth at Frieze is a good sign of direction and confidence, so track those galleries – visit them between fairs, and see how their work lives in quieter conditions.

You can also follow artists online. Many great artists are working steadily outside the hype cycle. And yes, you can still make discoveries in graduate shows. The RCA, Goldsmiths, Slade, the Royal Academy Schools, Yale, Städelschule: every year someone breaks through. Most won’t, but some will. If you’re collecting for the long-term, it’s worth the hunt.

And this is maybe the crux: when people ask, “Is it smarter to look elsewhere?”, they often mean, “Where will I find the next big thing?” But smart collecting isn’t just about timing the market. It’s about building a relationship with the work, the ideas behind it, the people making it. It’s not about who’s hot, it’s about who keeps going. Most artists who are hot are only hot for a couple of years, so I’d suggest that it’s artists who have been quietly working for 20 or 30 years, maybe briefly in, but then outside the churn, who can be some of the most rewarding to collect. Not just because they might be undervalued, but because you can see the trajectory, the consistency, the thinking.

So, are art fairs worth it? Yes, if you know how to look. But don’t expect clarity from a blizzard. Go to fairs to take the temperature. Go to galleries to ask questions. Go to studios for intimacy. And go to people you trust when you don’t yet trust your own eye.

And if you’re at the fair, and the peach canvas starts to look like a metaphor for your own mental collapse, take a breath. Step outside. Then go back in. There’s always something worthwhile in the next booth along.