Frieze, Basel and Venice Biennale 2011

I’m ashamed to admit it but even though I live here in London I’ve never actually made it along to any of the Frieze art fairs. But this year looks to change all that as I’ve just been invited to be one of the five artists representing Natasha Akhmerova’s Barbarian Art gallery at this year’s fair. Barbarian Art is an international gallery based in Zurich and Moscow and active worldwide.

This year looks like being a pretty good year for international art fairs. As well as being invited to exhibit at Frieze and represent VZ Art Gallery at the Liste art fair in Basel, Switzerland, I’ve just booked (OK, my mate Holly has done all the bookings as she’s the organised one and secretly loves being in charge of everything) my flights and accommodation for this year’s Venice Biennale. I went for the first time two years ago and even though I lost my mobile (and 10 years worth of none backed-up phone numbers) in one of the canals I had the most amazing time. It’s incredible how small the art scene is because at the last Venice Biennale I bumped into so many people that I knew from London – a prime example being that on our first night there my mate popped next door to see if he could borrow a cork screw and found out that we’d booked a room next to a group of artist friends from back home. This year we’ve made sure that we arrive in Venice a few days ahead of the official opening weekend so as to take full advantage of the many opening parties – oh yeah!