Art fairs have been through a boom in recent years with the likes of Frieze transforming the buying of new art into a circus of excitement. With London, New York and Miami getting a fair crack of the whip, what about the artists quietly forging their own movements and hubs outside the dominating big tops?

Twin spoke to artist, curator and project-maker Flis Mitchell about CAVE, an art fair in Liverpool that kicks off today…

 
Why have you organised CAVE?
I created CAVE alongside (artist and curator) Kevin Hunt because Liverpool hadn’t had any art fairs, even though it’s common in other cities to have a fair at the same time as the Biennial, but if you want something that doesn’t exist you should just create it, so we did.

When we were developing CAVE we quickly realised that we should dispense with the traditional model and come up with something that excited us, so here it is, an art fair that shows only exciting unrepresented artists, sells work and allows us to drink cocktails in pineapples.

What is CAVE focused on?
CAVE only exhibits unrepresented artists, excludes galleries and doesn’t take a commission fee or an exhibition fee; this means the whole sale price of each work is received by the artist, people forget that when you visit the traditional gallery or art fair 50% of the sale price goes to the host, not the producer, and that’s fine, but we wanted to play with an alternative.
We don’t have art assistants, or layers of mediation, which allows artists to engage with visitors, it’s a dynamic and fluid sales system- we encourage people to ask questions, make deals and get involved. CAVE is a dynamic platform for talk and transactions.

I feel like there’s allot of unnecessary mystification that surrounds contemporary art sales, it helps to contextualise those super-cosmically high prices. I prefer direct transactions, and see buying art at CAVE as buying at trade rather than retail.

Are all the artists involved connected to Liverpool?
Roughly 25% of the artists are from Liverpool; however we’ve also got artists from across the UK, including Bristol, London, Nottingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Plymouth. Our only specification was that the artists were exciting and unrepresented and UK based.

Can you tell me about a couple of artists that you’re particularly excited about?
I am so excited to be presenting our artists!

I’m totally in love with the artist who are producing new or performative works for CAVE. Sam Venables is a very exciting artist, whose work is utlra right now, for CAVE Sam is creating an installation where visitors can get an ‘art hair cut’ in her Sick Salon; another personal favourite of mine is Matt Welch who’s huge work Untitled (Crass Sculpture) is awesome. I totally love them all! Oliver Braids performance of Sincerity Shoe is absolutely one I’m going to see, and there are rumours of a mysterious performance from 70/30.

What is the Liverpool art scene like right now?
Underrated! Liverpool is a cultural beast! We host of the UK’s largest art festival, and have numerous successful creative start ups, for instance: Deep Hedonia, or The Double Negative (recently interviewed on Radio6 Music), we’ve got creative industry incubators, we’ve got DaDaFest and Brouhaha both of which are internationally recognised, there are a host of world class graphic design studio’s, we’ve got critically engaged and ambitious studio groups, and in fact The Royal Standard (artist led studio group where Kevin and I am based) was involved in No Soul For Sale (Tate Modern) and was one of 70 international independent spaces included, and one of only 5 from the UK. We’ve got the John Moore’s Painting prize, the Liverpool Art Prize etc. etc.

Yet Liverpool still suffers from a suffocating lack of coverage, for instance Adrian Searle didn’t mention Liverpool at all in his highlights of 2012, despite the aforementioned Biennial and painting prize. It’s frustrating to be sitting on what feels like the UK’s best kept secret.

Tell us something about Liverpool we might not expect?
No way! Visit, and find out for yourself, that it might not be what you think…

What’s your favourite colour and why?
Ah, I’m waaaay to flighty in my tastes to choose, maybe I’ll compromise with you and pick the red and orange families, oh, and fluro colours and gold, and top of the draw, glow-in-the –dark. Mmmmmm tasty colour treats.

CAVE is at the Baltic Creative Campus, Liverpool until 16 September.

caveartfair.com