Fresh: Art Fair – Ellie and Jessica Wardle

The anticipation of art fairs is always engaging for avant-guard thinkers and creators, as visiting the Fresh: Art Fair will affirm, the fair immerses us into the realm of human boundary pushing as it envelopes us with meeting creators and identifying new masterpieces. It’s a short journey lasting just a few days of fostering a new audience and new artworks for interested art collectors, dealers, gallerists, artists and more importantly, the just plain curious. Ultimately, art fairs open a door to the utmost engaging journeys of human consciousness and the exploration of what it is to be human, to identify with this identity. Art is emotive in what it makes us feel. What is extraordinary is the powerful reactions a visitor may feel when wandering around stands and engaging in an intense, almost self indulgence of this phenomenon, it’s one of the only things left to us that is purely human, whether it’s a contemporary digital piece or a blue-chip modern artwork. When visiting an art fair, you often find yourself lost in a splendour of abstraction, it can at times almost feel intimidating as one moves from booth to booth and is mesmerised by the exploration of human imagination. Sometimes the feeling is overwhelming, as collectors and dealers move steadily engaged in conversation, with resolute self-assurance.

We all have visited museums to understand the works of artists, whether it’s Frida Kahlo, Klimt, Picasso or Louise Bourgeois. This excitement of understanding that art is to be enjoyed has often bypassed us and is often most misunderstood. This misconception that we have to understand some deeper meaning, or that it’s supposed to be a precursor to good taste, in fact, it is not for the exclusive, it not a club of distinguished art connoisseurs; art is for everyone. What resonates with the Fresh: Art Fair, is that art is personal, just like your favourite movie or music, it’s that simple.  However, despite the enthusiasm of purchases, the Fresh: Art Fair is way more than a pressure valve to purchase, its contemplative, educational, and with the learning is understanding, and sheer delight in the joy of being surrounded by sheer talent and skill that emotional expression by each artist, whether it is the slather of paint on an abstract paintwork, the refinement of skilled craftsmanship, an illusion, nonetheless, of what it feels to be human.

I am talking to two founders of the Fresh: Art Fair, Ellie and Jessica Wardle, who first established it with their father, Anthony Wardle, at Cheltenham racecourse in the Cotswolds in 2017, but instead of horses, it was over 5000 pieces of art, then expanding to Ascot Racecourse and then London at the historical Alexandra Palace. Ellie is an art dealer and owner of the Paragon gallery since 2013, and Jessica is marketing Director, with her extensive decade long career in marketing with Saatchi, before joining Fresh: Art Fair. Ellie and Jess explain how they started, and how Cheltenham is famous for having some of the biggest festivals in the country, including the biggest literature festival, “Attracting 100s of 1000s of people, including all the A-list celebrities from all over the world, and they all come to talk about their books” Ellie explains. Throughout the year, there is a festival for almost everything, apart from art. “So we thought we would start our own, with the perfect venue at The Centaur at Cheltenham Racecourse, a purpose-built event centre,” she explains.

Our conversation leaps straight into delving into talking about being all art enthusiasts and the joy of owning art. The adventures of the young art collectors who are absorbed in emerging new contemporary artists, or still seek a Hockney, Miro, Picasso, or Banksy.  “I had this wonderful interaction with this young woman. She was 18 years old and there with her mother. She fell in love with a piece of work by Banksy. She’d just got her first job and, with a bit of help from the gallery and the Fresh: Team, managed to purchase the artwork through Own Art” Jess tells us.  “To have bought a Banksy as her first ever piece of art, and to watch someone go on that journey, filled me with so much joy” Jess exclaims.

The conversation gets inspiring when I ask what makes the Fresh Art Fair stand out. Ellie talks about their slogan the, ‘Friendly art fair’, welcoming children to attend with workshops, and the enthusiasm of welcoming the young to enjoy art.

“One of our goals at Fresh: is to offer a really broad range of work, with plenty of variety and price points, but the most important factor always come down to quality” she emphasises, “A broad price range as well, we span, not just a several different genres, but a number of different time periods,” Ellie explains. “We’re not just a contemporary art fair. We have, over the last several years, been introducing more modern British and modern masters as well, because we want to be able to offer the visitors a chance to see an incredible range of work, merging talents and established artists, but also the blue chip artists,” she clarifies. “That they may never ordinarily get to see unless they go and visit a museum. And actually, it’s work that is accessible, that they can actually buy as well.” Ellie explains. I ask about the Fresh Art Fair’s approach to how galleries and artists are selected,  “Well, I think it is hard, actually, because I mean, one of our goals at Fresh is to offer a very broad range of work, and price range, but we want to, span, not just different genres, but different time periods as well. So we’re not just a contemporary art fair,” Ellie explains. “It’s work that is accessible, that they can actually buy as well”.

“We only offer original art and original prints. We don’t do reproduction,” Jess adds. “And that’s really important, I think, to stay true to that. And to make sure that we are supporting, you know, the artists in the galleries that we believe in them,” Jess emphasises. “There are no restrictions on price, there’s no upper limit on price, and a lower limit of £100.00; we don’t restrict galleries to just living artists.” The Fresh: Art covers quite a wide time frame of periods, and although they are not the biggest art fair in terms of the volume of exhibitors. “It is true to say that we have the widest range of artwork on offer, in terms of price point, living and dead artists, contemporary as well as modern,” Jess adds. “So there’s definitely something for everyone,” she clarifies. It isn’t only being accessible to high-end collectors, or homeowners that have large walls, “But it is there for everyone to come and enjoy this artwork” she explains.

As well as art dealers and owners of the fair, both Jess and Ellie are collectors. Jess explains that instead of collecting shoes or handbags, for her its art. An avid collector long before they owned the art fair, and long before Ellie owned an art gallery, she admits. Jess shows me an artwork of an astronaut hanging on the wall in her home, she describes the evocative reaction she had to the photograph, she has no interest in space, or space exploration, but describes as she wandered around the fair and she kept coming back to the artwork, “I cant explain it ” she tells me, it evoked this powerful feeling that just captivated her, she had to have it and take it home. Nothing feels better than owning that piece of something that makes you feel, it takes you to a place that you want to remember, that sits in your home or office. The art fair is that escape, nothing can explain what makes you realise why you like something, or the simple of I don’t know why I like it, I just do. “Whether it’s just looking up at a piece that you bought, and it creates a memory of the person you were with or where you were when you bought it, it does have this amazing ability to lift spirits. And I think we would like to see ourselves in the future, as continuing to be that sort of champion of art, as a joyful” Jess explains.

We discuss the signals that an artist has long-term potential, “There are a number of factors, not least, consistency, but another key factor is identity; developing a strong identity in terms of style, mark-making, palette etc, so pieces are instantly recognisable. I think that’s so important in determining longevity” Ellie explains. “One of the things that makes you know, some really famous artists are really famous is the fact that you can tell it’s their painting without knowing it,” she clarifies. If an artist can manage to develop their own identity. “That is definitely half the battle, in my opinion”. I ask if they think narrative is important or not,  both explain that they think narrative is more important now than it has ever been before and are looking for that emotional connection, the story behind it, whether it’s the artist’s story, whether it’s a story about the piece itself.

“What collectors often misunderstand when buying art,” Jess explains a revelation she had recently had after a talk Ellie gave at an event organised by some wealth managers, and it was focused on collectors, “What really struck me was that, I think often when we think about collecting, we think about the value of a piece. And certainly when you think about investment, you think about the value of that investment, within your lifetime, you know, will it go up,” she questions. “Will I gain from this investment within my lifetime” whereas she thinks art is very different, often it spans multiple lifetimes and generations, “Probably where it yields its greatest value, isn’t a sort of, I’m going to invest in this Hockney now so that, you know, maybe I can sell it in 20 years if I need to; actually, it’s a bigger pass down, it’s in the legacies that you leave the future generation” she clarifies.

Jess tells another little anecdote, with her younger son, who realised that his mother would be at the art fair on his birthday end of January, and emphasising that in return she could purchase him another artwork. “Will it happen every year, Mummy?” her son asked. Jess had to tell him that it’s possible that she might not be around those dates every year. And he said, “Oh, well, I’m going to have a very good collection, then, aren’t I?” Jess emphases, “I think it’s so important to bring young people on that journey.” The art fair offers a trail sheet for the children, setting little challenges to engage them with the artworks and to look at them, and to think about them in different ways, to build that appreciation for art, encouraging a sort of love of it quite early on. They are the collectors of the future, she explains.

 As we come towards the end of the conversation, I ask what makes them both fall in love with an artwork, “I think, for me colour, is the first thing that will draw me to a piece of art,” Ellie explains “It’s got to resonate with me on an emotional level in some way. I don’t think ever in my life have I bought a piece of art that I have said that will go nicely with our sofa, and I’m not saying that that is the wrong thing to do, but personally it’s got to have some kind of emotional attachment,” She explains. “Absolutely,” Jess adds, “That emotional connection can be quite intangible sometimes”. As she described purchasing her astronaut, “He’s looking down. He’s very contemplative; there was a sort of arresting moment, and I just couldn’t stop looking at it. And I look at it every day and I just love it still, it just makes me feel something. I don’t know what. And sometimes it makes me feel different things, but it makes me feel.” I ask them if they could own any artwork. What would it be?  Surprisingly Ellie doesn’t choose a really famous artist; she mentions artist Flora Yukhnovich, making her name in the contemporary art world, inspired by the Rococo or otherwise any Hockney, whereas Jessica chooses any artwork by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

My final question is a fun one, as I ask them what they think is the best and worst thing about the art world? “The only limit is our imagination,” Ellie exclaims. What still surprises them both about the art world is how it constantly evolves. “It touches on my previous answer about, you know, imagination being our only limit and the fact that there’s always something new,” Ellie explains. “It’s just reinventing itself all the time” Jess adds. “Especially, thinking about digital art now is becoming more of a feature on the global art stage, and I just, I love the fact that it is constantly pushing boundaries all the time” Ellie responds. “But not, in, you know, not in an explosive way, it’s just, always moving forward.” 

Interview: Antoinette Haselhorst