Meet May Fair
May Fair is reimagining the traditional art fair model.
Originally scheduled to launch in the flesh of April 2020, May Fair’s plans were derailed by the global pandemic, forcing the fair’s facilitators back to the drawing board. May Fair Online was born.
We chat with May Fair facilitator, Ophelia King.
What is May Fair?
May Fair is a new alternative art fair that exhibits emerging artists from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific. The artworks are affordable and the artists are innovative, providing an exciting opportunity for visitors to collect pieces they might not have necessarily known about before seeing these at the fair. We aim to work in a much more collaborative and organic way than traditional art fairs, placing a focus on hospitality and helping foster connections between curators, artists, writers, and the public.
Our inaugural event was due to launch in-person in May this year and like many things had to be reimagined due to lockdown. In response, May Fair Online was born which enabled us to continue working on the project within a changing environment in a way that still sat alongside our vision for an in-person fair.
May Fair was established in 2020 by Ophelia King, Becky Hemus, Eleanor Woodhouse and Nina Lloyd.
What is May Fair Online?
On moving the project online, we spent a lot of time considering what the visitor experience could and would be. Providing additional texts to read and booth renders that help contextualise the artworks seemed particularly important, as many of our artists sit outside the commercial gallery context and might not be known to ‘visitors’. It was important that each booth felt like an exhibition. We collaborated with a 3D artist Edward Smith and web developer Samuel Beca to create dream-like spatial renders that go beyond what could conventionally be executed in real life.
The 2020 online edition of May Fair includes 20 unique virtual booths by independent artists, curators, artist-run initiatives and project spaces, alongside a weekly series of public programmes.
Visitors can navigate an online building, view virtual exhibition spaces and click through to photographs of artworks that are available for purchase. The architectural and spatial components within each booth were designed by the curators or artists and in some instances in collaboration with the May Fair team.
May Fair was delivered by render artist Edward Smith, web developer Samuel Beca and identity designer Raphael Roake.
Sione Tuívailala Monū
There have been various digital art fairs popping up globally in response to Covid-19, what sets May Fair Online apart?
Our primary focus has been on creating a sense of hospitality for viewers in response to the constraints of launching and existing online only.
Our physical fair was going to be really open access as we know how prohibitive entry fees can be to some people (even those working within the arts industry). We wanted each booth to feel like an exhibition rather than a catalogue of artworks for sale, with emerging artists in particular each show is a chance for a new person to engage with someone’s practice.
When we moved the concept to exist online, it was important to us to create digital exhibition spaces where visitors felt welcome and had the same kind of exploratory sense of discovery that you would get in person. This extended to the digital booth renders, artist moodboards and accompanying exhibition texts that were commissioned to give context and meaning to each booth.
Why did you decide to do May Fair? and what makes it unique?
May Fair is the only art fair in New Zealand that celebrates new-generation artists who are not yet represented by a commercial gallery. Because New Zealand is so small there are only a handful of professional contemporary art galleries, but we have so many artists who are consistently producing high calibre work and exhibitions. May Fair provides a platform for these artists to sell their artworks and reach out to new audiences.
These artists are integral to the New Zealand art community and will form the new wave of people who become collectable. We are passionate about sharing the work that these artists do so that we can help them gain the recognition they deserve! We are working alongside artists from a range of communities which was very important to us.
We have also commissioned a text by a New Zealand writer for each of the twenty booths. This reflects our desire to support creative practitioners across a range of arts disciplines and gives more context to the booths by fostering dialogue between visitors and artists.
What has the response to May Fair been like?
Insanely good - so much so we extended the fair to run for an additional two weeks!
The response from the wider art community to May Fair has been incredible, as we managed to offer a way for people to connect digitally with peers and practitioners even when in-person exhibitions had been delayed or cancelled. I think that people felt connected to what we were doing because we presented context around each artist’s practice and engaged with such an array of curators, artists and writers.
Almost every booth has sold multiple artworks, and some booths have sold out.
We are incredibly proud that we have been able to connect artists with new audiences who might have either never heard of their practice, or who might have admired an artist’s work from afar and not known how to go about purchasing a piece with ease. The artworks are also reasonably affordable, and it’s great that this has enabled a wide audience to collect.
The response has only further solidified to us that there is a hunger for something other than what already existed.
What has it been like as the facilitators of the fair?
It was a huge task for four of us to take on alongside other full-time commitments, and while sometimes we have felt close to breaking point, we kept returning to the idea that “where there’s a will there’s a way”! We absolutely underestimated the undertaking, but if you knew how hard something was going to be before you did it, you simply wouldn’t do it - so in that sense I am glad we had our rose tinted glasses on.
We are surrounded by a very dedicated and supportive community that were willing to help realise the project even before we knew whether we had secured any funding from Creative New Zealand. Luckily we did, and we were able to pay a small amount to everyone involved! There is a lot of unpaid labour in the arts so although the fee’s weren’t huge it feels like a real achievement that every contributor was paid.
There are a lot of unique challenges in a very small and under resourced team coordinating over 60 artists, writers and curators while going in-and-out-and-in of lockdown, but ultimately the response and outcome has totally made the blood, sweat and tears worth it.
Highlight of the booths?
Ophelia King: Very hard to choose… but Naawie Tutugoro’s booth has a special feeling, and for a digital render to achieve a “feeling” feels like a real feat. I think Balamohan Shingade created a stunning architectural home for artist Chervelle Athena’s works and I of course love the serene sunken bathing room I had a hand in designing for Amy Unkovich.
Nââwié Tutugoro
Becky Hemus: Eleanor and I run a gallery project called Wet Green who also participated in May Fair with a presentation of works by Wai Ching Chan, Jenny Takahashi Palmer and Lillian Paige Walton. Our booth is incredibly dark and quite surreal – an eerie place of reflection that goes beyond what could have been achieved if we had staged this project in a gallery. I also adore Sione Tuívailala Monū's artwork, and their booth has an incredible selection of artworks alongside a text by one of my favourite New Zealand poets, essa may ranipiri that speaks to the white marble interior in a very compelling way. Blaine Western’s booth is also really memorable for me, it’s lyrical and critical and provides a nice counterpoint to the idea of a booth as temporary space to house artworks.
Blaine Western
Eleanor Woodhouse: I obviously have a soft spot for two of the booths I had a hand in designing, Wet Green and noLips, both very moody presentations. But two of my favourite moments are Biljana Popovic’s wobbling fuselage and the little snail cresting one of Lucy Meyle’s logs.
nolips
Nina LLoyd: I love the bubbling pond on Alex Laurie’s rooftop and George Watson and Tyson Campbell’s muddied room was a stand out - I also have a soft spot for Lucy’s snail.
Alex Laurie
What's next for May Fair - are we going to see an IRL version?
The response has been so positive that we are motivated to do an in-person fair as we had originally intended. When this will be happen is very much TBC, times are so uncertain at the moment that we have decided to set a date in the next couple of months as things unfold, but when we do we will try to factor in as much contingency as possible as we know how much work goes into creating an in-person exhibit for both artists and organisers.
In order to do an IRL fair, we also need to secure some pretty sizable funding, it’s a tricky one because you have to put in a lot of unpaid labour simply applying for public funding and often whether or not the project moves forward is entirely dependent on whether or not the funding grant goes through. So it becomes a bit of a chicken and egg situation. May Fair Online has allowed us to prove the intent and ambition to see May Fair succeed so that should put us in good stead to find a way to fund an IRL edition.
