The newest offshoot of the Affordable Art Fair, a franchise that originated in London in 1999 and has generated multiple offspring around the world, is coming to Toronto in May. After opening with a private preview on May 7, at the Direct Energy Center, it runs for the next four days.
The format of the Toronto edition is identical to the dozen or so fairs in cities that include London; Bristol, England; Rome; Singapore; and New York (whose fair ended on April 6). Each exhibitor shows at least three artists. No artwork can be priced at more than $10,000 and half of the works must be less than $5,000. “It has the same ethos as the others,” said Nicole Milkovich, the Toronto fair’s director.
But not the same name. The Toronto version is called Love Art, a name that circumvents an inconvenient legal fact. In Canada, the name “Affordable Art Fair” belongs to the Toronto Art Expo, a sprawling affair with hundreds of artists, many of them offering work at budget prices. This year’s Expo, the seventh, ended in mid-April.
The organizers settled on the new title, Ms. Milkovich said, “because we are constantly telling people, when they ask what art they should buy, ‘Buy for love.’”
The idea was born in 1996 when Will Ramsay, an Old Etonian and former captain in the Scots Guards, opened Will’s Art Warehouse in a converted motorcycle garage in Parsons Green, a neighborhood in southwest London. Mr. Ramsay, a collector, was put off by the snootiness and opacity of London’s galleries. He came up with an alternative: a bargain basement offering the works of 150 more or less unknown artists at rock-bottom prices. Three years later, Mr. Ramsay organized the first Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park. It attracted 10,000 visitors, and Mr. Ramsay now presides over an international operation.
The Toronto fair has signed up 40 galleries so far, 16 of them from Toronto. “We do not want it to be a huge event,” Ms. Milkovich said. “Forty to 60 is what Toronto can handle.”