The gallery owner India Rose James is launching a new boutique art fair specifically for female-led galleries this October in London. Echo Soho will take place at Artist’s House on Manette Street during Frieze Week from 16 to 19 October with room for 12 exhibitors.
James, who founded her gallery Soho Revue in 2019, tells The Art Newspaper that she’s had had the idea for some time: “I attend Frieze every year and, having gone to other cities where there’s so many satellite fairs [during major art fairs], I always think why doesn’t London have this? I know there’s been a few fairs over the years that have tried—there was Zoo, there was Sunday which recently stopped, and there’s Minor Attractions—but it doesn’t compare to, say, Miami where there’s, like, ten fairs on at the same time.”
She adds: “Selfishly, it’s for me wanting to shop as well—as much as I love going to Frieze, sometimes you just you don’t want to spend that amount of money, or it is out of your price range completely.” Charlotte Leseberg Smith, associate director and special projects lead at Soho Revue, chimes in: “In no way are we anti-Frieze. We love Frieze, and we hope that Echo Soho can be a feeder for Frieze. We see it as an alternative programme to help get galleries who are mid-size or emerging to a place where they feel prepared to take that next step into Frieze in the years to come.”
Why the female focus? “One, we’re female-led and our programme is predominantly female artists, and so is my network,” James says. “But also, when we were writing the [potential exhibitor] list, we realised there’s not actually that many female-led galleries, which shouldn’t be a thing. So that was kind of my niche for it really, showing it could be like this.”
India Rose James
Courtesy Soho Revue
Echo Soho will take place across two floors of Artist’s House, a Georgian townhouse which is home to Soho Revue’s residency programme and is owned by Soho Estates, the property empire owned by James’s family (James and her sister Fawn are the main beneficial owners) that is also one of the event’s sponsors.
Downstairs will be a bar and concept store, while 12 gallery booths will be set out in the ballroom upstairs (and later used as studio spaces for artists in residence before next year’s fair). Stand sizes range from six to nine square metres and prices start at an affordable £850 for the smallest. “We’re doing a lot of things to support the galleries,” James says. “We’ll be assisting with installs, we have an art handler there throughout, and we’ll do the booth photography for everyone. So, the only thing they need to do is bring the art and invigilate. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible.”
Confirmed exhibitors so far include Pipeline, Gillian Jason Gallery, and Awita (the Association of Women in the Arts), which will host a selling presentation in the building’s former chapel, titled Resonant Spaces: Curating Echoes. The booth’s contents (not limited to female artists) will be selected via an open call, inviting Awita members to put forward artists that “engage with ideas of memory, repetition, sound, and feminist leadership”, according to a statement. Submissions close this Friday, 12 July.
Other events include printmaking workshops with Revue Studios, live performances and evening events, including a preview hosted by the Contemporary Art Society on Friday 17 October. The fair has also partnered with the private members club Soho House which will present The Soho House Prize to one gallery booth selected by Kate Bryan, its global director of art, and Jack Lazenby, the art collection manager. The winning gallery director will receive a one-year Soho House membership. The art materials company Cass Art will also present The Echo Soho Cass Art Award to one artist, giving them a discount on materials and a two-hour art industry guidance session with its founder Mark Cass.
