Art Riga Fair 2015

ART RIGA FAIR returned for a second November running in 2015, and this time the organisers had a bigger claim to make: foreign galleries were flocking to the young Baltic fair. Roughly twenty exhibitors from nine countries, Germany, Italy, Russia, Latvia, Georgia, Israel, Indonesia, the USA and Switzerland, filled the Latvian Railway History Museum's engine hall for a week of 21st century painting, photography, sculpture, multimedia and rare books, opened by an address from the President of Latvia.

From Capital of Culture to second act

ART RIGA FAIR was born in 2014, the year Riga held the title of European Capital of Culture. It came back in November 2015 under the same founders who had started it: Dags Vidulejs, the fair's artistic director, and Gaļina (Galina) Maksimova, its curator and managing director, both also tied to Euroclub Gallery. Their company, SIA Happy Art Museum, ran the fair's press office and its own year-round gallery out of a 300 sqm art cafe and wine shop on the seventh floor of the Galleria Riga shopping centre on Dzirnavu iela, a space stocked with some 300 artworks.

Every day without holidays from 13:00 to 22:00, "GALLERIA RIGA" 7-level "HAPPY ART MUSEUM", art gallery with art cafe and wine shop. Gallery authors of 300 artworks... 300m2, 100 chairs, 100 Portuguese wine varieties. artriga.com, venue page (2015)

Foreign galleries flock in

The organizers' own tally, circulated in a presentation deck dated 30 May 2015, promised galleries from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Indonesia, Georgia, Estonia, Mexico and Latvia. By the time the doors opened, the confirmed roster had shifted a little, to Germany, Italy, Russia, Latvia, Georgia, Israel, Indonesia, the USA and Switzerland, as final confirmations came in right up to opening night.

Names attached to those flags on the fair's participants page include:

Neputns, the Riga publishing house behind many of Latvia's finest art books, is the likely source of the "rare books" on the bill.

Simon Hewitt returns, and a panel on enigma

The organizers' 2015 deck promised two discussion fixtures: "Investigation in Originals", a talk on art authentication by the Oxford-educated art writer Simon Hewitt, and "ART & Enigma", a panel with the architecture theorist Alexander Rappaport and the philosopher Alexey Romanov. Both Hewitt and Rappaport had taken part in the first edition in 2014, and were becoming fixtures of the fair's early years.

A week under the roof of an engine shed

The fair again took over the Large Hall of the Latvijas Dzelzceļa vēstures muzejs (Latvian Railway History Museum), a 1,050 sqm room with authentic brick walls and 6.5 metre ceilings, inside a former 19th century locomotive workshop on the left bank of the Daugava at Uzvaras bulvāris. The museum itself had been founded on 30 August 1994, with its exhibition hall inside the engine warehouse opened in September 2000 after a renovation that began in 1999.

As in 2014, the week kept a familiar shape: a VIP preview evening on Monday 23 November opened the fair with an address by the President of Latvia, ahead of a full week of gallery presentations and artist talks, and a nightly short film programme staged, unusually, inside a narrow gauge railway carriage parked among the museum's rolling stock. A closing panel discussion on art and society brought the week to an end.

Partners, and a balloon over the museum

Display cases and glazing for the show came through Art Fairs Service, a Riga supplier whose "HugLock" vitrine system had been demonstrated to Baltic museum professionals at the first edition. The company's founder, Mārcis Laidiņš, is credited as the fair's partner.

The fair's own sponsorship prospectus, aimed at drink and media brands, claimed around 10,000 visitors a year and offered advertisers everything from a hot air balloon carrying the ART RIGA logo above the museum for a week (850 EUR) to a stake in the VIP catalogue handed out at the preview. It also revealed the same organizers' bigger ambition: a 2,500 sqm exhibition and trade hall called Pinakotēka, built for 3 million EUR out near the airport road, next to BMW, Lexus and the US Embassy, and, as of the 2015 prospectus, still being marketed for rent "due to the banking crisis."

Art in the eyes of investors from Western countries at the Riga Art Market Annual visited is the easiest place to buy post-Soviet art masterpieces. artriga.com, sponsorship prospectus (2015)

The fair pitched Riga to Western collectors as the easiest place to find post-Soviet art, the same idea the critic Simon Hewitt would take up in his 2016 essay "Eastern Eden?".

Small and quirky, for now

Independent press attention was still thin. Arterritory.com, surveying the Baltic art scene that August, judged ART RIGA:

small and quirky Arterritory.com, August 2015

not yet risen, in the magazine's words, beyond an embryonic stage. A fair verdict, perhaps, but one that was already pulling in dealers from nine countries and opening its doors to the President of Latvia.

Two editions on, in 2017, the fair would announce that foreign galleries were flocking to its fourth edition from as far afield as Mexico and Indonesia. In November 2015, with around twenty stands, nine countries and a presidential opening address, the second edition was already living up to that line.