A Plural Affair

A new contemporary art fair in Montreal renews intimacy in a transactional art market.

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Until recently, I have never considered art fairs a subject of critical contemplation, especially in Canada, where the raw capitalism of market-driven contemporary art fairs is largely concentrated in a Toronto rivulet. My sporadic attendance over the years has erred on the side of obligation, leaving me oscillating between anxiety and disdain for the transactional nature of the affair. 

I am not thinking here of the fairs or festivals that resemble open studios where artists directly sell their work, or what might be found at Art Vancouver, The Works Art & Design Festival in Edmonton, or Art Now Saskatchewan. While these events connect artists with the public, they generally do not traverse into the realm of institutional collections or exhibitions.

Globally, art fairs are identified by brand as much as by city: Frieze has expanded beyond London into New York, Los Angeles and Seoul, while Art Basel has grown from Switzerland to Miami Beach and Hong Kong. Stateside, the Armory Show in New York and EXPO in Chicago are mega-fairs where individual and institutional collectors, along with museum curators and directors, elbow their way through the makeshift aisles of the art industry’s most prestigious trade shows.

It is now the fair, not the museum, that is the art world’s de facto focal point, a one-stop shop to see, hear and contemplate an enormous array of art and its many discourses. At their best, fairs can be charming, but at their worst, they are a mélange of hobnobbing misery and irritating artificial lighting. So, it was with great relief – and even surprise – that I walked out of the inaugural edition of the Plural contemporary art fair in Montreal, on from April 21 to April 23, feeling more excited than drained. 

With fewer than 50 exhibiting galleries coming from coast-to-coast and views overlooking the majestic St. Lawrence River, Plural was a small but mighty counter to the mega-fair experience. In a country with a modest art market, Plural was the closest thing to a national showcase that I’ve seen in the two decades I have been writing about art. 

Plural is not without precedent. It replaces Papier, the locally grown fair organized by the Montreal-based Contemporary Art Galleries Association. Over its 15-year run, Papier popped up in various locations – whether Westmount Square, a residential and office complex designed by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, or a sprawling outdoor site at the Quartier des spectacles, the city’s main cultural district. Papier’s focus expanded over the years from primarily paper-based (and cost-efficient) works from local galleries to a national showcase of contemporary art, all while building an accessible market with a loyal base of supporters. 

My curiosity about Plural was partly prompted by memories of the association’s short-lived Feature contemporary art fair in Toronto. At the time, the city’s art market seemed robust enough to support two simultaneous art fairs. As reported by the Globe and Mail, Art Toronto’s sales in the years leading up to 2016, when half its exhibitors were international, had reached some $19 million annually. Feature appeared on the scene and went head-to-head with Art Toronto, which, since its launch in 2000, had become the behemoth of Canadian art fairs. But after two years, Feature folded with a promise for a “renewed presence.” 

Despite overlapping dates, patrons and even exhibitors, Feature was everything Art Toronto was not: a scaled-down exposition in the chic 19th-century warehouse that is home to the Canadian Opera Company. In contrast to Art Toronto, held in the cavernous and windowless Metro Convention Centre, Feature was intimate yet offered a similar calibre of art. I was pleased to see Plural had followed Feature’s playbook.

When I attended Plural with Montreal artist Nadège Grebmeier Forget on a busy weekend afternoon, the atmosphere felt languorous, the space filled with old friends happy to see each other. There was a notable contingent of Toronto galleries, alongside representation from Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Guelph, Ottawa and Halifax, but most exhibitors and artists were locally driven. Many galleries chose to focus on a single artist from Montreal or one with Montreal connections.

Toronto’s Susan Hobbs Gallery, for instance, featured only one artist, former Montrealer Laurie Walker, while Towards, also from Toronto, gave solo attention to Anna Binta Diallo, who is based in Montreal. Other galleries, such as Slate Fine Art in Regina and The Blue Building in Halifax, featured, and possibly introduced, a myriad of artists from the Prairies and the East Coast, respectively. Ottawa’s Central Art Garage offered one of the more inviting displays, with a neon sculpture by Joi T. Arcand that pointed the way towards works by Camille Turner, Michael Belmore, Bozica Radjenovic and others.

I was pleasantly soothed to come across Rihab Essayh’s ongoing installation The Hymn of the Warriors of Love, which responded to the event’s sensory overload by offering a space for visitors to rest and recharge. The Pavilion exhibition, with select galleries showing a single artist, was also successful. It included an outstanding contribution, a new work from Shannon Bool, 1:1, from Toronto’s Daniel Faria Gallery.

Art markets tend to thrive in places with a confluence of cash and cultural capital.

The art market’s landscape always ebbs and flows, but the last few years have seen the closures of smaller galleries, including the Gerry Thomas Gallery in Calgary, Montreal’s Galerie Trois Points, Vancouver’s Republic Gallery and Toronto’s Georgia Scherman Projects. In tandem, and in some cases, in anticipation of these closures, there have been significant mergers – Montreal’s Parisian Laundry with Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran (Bradley + Ertaskiran), Galerie Division and Galerie René Blouin (Blouin Division), and former Division Toronto director Gareth Brown-Jowett with Patel Gallery (Patel Brown), all of which were at Plural.

This consolidation has mostly occurred in Montreal, a popular locale for artists due to the city’s rich cultural life and formerly cheap rent. Art markets tend to thrive in places with a confluence of cash and cultural capital, and while Toronto remains the country’s financial epicentre, the recent tech influx into Montreal makes the City of Saints a slightly more interesting art market to watch.

While Art Toronto, coming up Oct. 26 to Oct. 29, is international, Plural was surprisingly national. But beyond that, if the market is going to lead the way, this first iteration of Plural provides a glimmer of hope that the future might be more than just transactional. ■

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