Art@Agnes Agnes Hotel Art Fair 2008
at Agnes Hotel and Apartments Tokyo
in the Shinjuku area
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Art@Agnes 2008
Held at the Agnes Hotel and Apartments in Iidabashi and now in its 4th year, “Art@Agnes” brings 33 of Tokyo’s top galleries together for a weekend-long bed-bound contemporary art fair.
Ashley Rawlings. Born in 1981 in London. After a year of studying painting and mixed media at Chelsea College of Art & Design, he took on Japanese Studies at Cambridge. He moved to Tokyo in 2005, where he studies the history of Japanese post-war art at Sophia University and works as a freelance writer, translator and editor. As well as writing and editing for TABlog, he writes for the Japan Times and the ART iT website. He is also the editor of Art Space Tokyo, an intimate guide to the Tokyo art world. When not in galleries and museums or taking photographs, he enjoys losing himself in among Tokyo's skyscrapers, wandering silent streets, and riding out the occasional earthquakes. Will only consider returning to Britain once they've fixed the weather. Contact at: ashley (at) tokyoartbeat.com » See other writings
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TABlog's writers and video reporters deliver regular reviews, features and interviews to stimulate discussion about all sides of Tokyo's creative scene.
takashi yamada
2008-01-14
was it me or did everyone look like the work was like our mothers and fathers cleaning out our closets of our childhood memorabilia? IT was fun but there was nothing i coveted, really. Is this what the Japanese art world has come to? I guess I can’t wait to get back to NYC next week. I had the misfortune to see Roppongi X-ing and the space of somebody’s future too. As a Japanese I am deeply saddened. What is happening here?
Aneta Glinkowska
2008-01-14
what did you expect? it was just another artfair, where we go to shop not only for childhood memorabilia, but to also look for childhood closet skeletons. did you find any?
Kevin Mcgue
2008-01-16
Attending an art fair in a hotel was a bit like going to a Saturday morning garage sale in a suburban American town, only everything is priced much higher. Kudos to Ashley for making some sense of this somewhat confusing event and showing that an art fair can be fun even for those who can’t afford to buy anything.
takashi yamada
2008-01-16
apparently i cant expect much and thanks for your agreement.
Ashley Rawlings
2008-01-18
I think it was a real shame that they didn’t have Boice Planning show again, as their performative piece really was the highlight of last year’s fair. Overall, this year was an improvement on last year, though. More galleries seemed to have come to the realisation that less is more and that cramming as much as possible into those little rooms just looks awful unless it’s meant as a some kind of installation piece. Still, negotiating those small rooms with so many people going in and out was exhausting. If this art fair grows in popularity any more, it’s going to have to start controlling visitor numbers.
Ashley Rawlings
2008-01-19
It turns out in a follow-up press release that the art fair just sent out that due to last year’s overcrowding, this year’s visitor number were already being controlled!
With 2500 people who visited this year, that’s roughly 5 visitors in each of the 33 rooms per hour on each day.