Today, Minor Attractions feels more like a curated group show than a trade fair, with 75 galleries from 15 countries taking over rooms on the first floor of the Newman.
A site-specific installation by Léa Porré unfolds between the bathroom and bedroom of one of the first rooms. The sink overflows with red grapes, while arabesque-shaped wooden structures hang throughout the space and inside the shower, framing animations of surreal, almost hallucinatory feasts. The contrast between digital imagery and physical craftsmanship is central to the artist’s practice, as she embraces both as valid tools for imaginative world-building. Porré describes these works as “vignettes of a fragmented collective memory,” fictional souvenirs in which remnants of dreams, constructed cultural stereotypes and historical forms coalesce into hybrid symbolic fragments, merging individual and collective imagination.
Presenting the installation is Tache, a two-year-old London gallery with a space just across from the hotel, participating for a second time. “Minor Attractions has grown into such a distinctive part of the art week here in London,” gallery director Lauren Fulcher told Observer. The gallery deliberately returned with site-specific works responding to the bedroom and bathroom interiors, she added. “Minor Attractions has proven to us how significant the installation of works is for collectors, even in the most commercial of art world environments. An active curatorial process and a refusal to compromise on intentional, inventive installations have translated to our strongest sales.”
