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What’s affordable at Affordable Art Fair?

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“Daddy, what is affordable?” asked Pangzi.

“Good question,” I reasoned. “These days nothing is really affordable.”

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“I mean, what is the meaning of affordable?”

“Oh, that…”

The concept of money is not something that comes easily to a six-year-old. A perfect place to learn is the Affordable Art Fair where he could see for himself.

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The Affordable Art Fair is a half-yearly event where who’s who in the contemporary art scene peddle their ware to buyers looking for something… affordable.

Affordable art supposedly goes for as low as $200, up to a maximum of $10,000. The premise is simple: put art within reach of the masses. It works apparently. The fair started in London and has gone international.

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“Daddy, is this affordable art?” Pangzi wasted no time in finding out.

I looked at the price tag. At $10,000, this had to be the best art the fair was offering. Then again, I didn’t think I’d readily shell out that amount for this particular piece.

“Not really,” I concluded. “That’s not cheap to poor people.”

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“Daddy, look… Lego!” He got visibly excited. “Is this affordable art?”

$10,000 again. For something I can put together myself with individual humanoids?

“Maybe there’s something cheaper upstairs. Remember, you can touch but try not to break anything.”

If you break something, you run. 

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The second floor of the F1 Pit Building where the fair was held indeed offered more variety. I was impressed by the range of sellers the organiser managed to attract.

Some came from as far as New York, and post-event figures would later reveal that these artists did not go home empty-handed.

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“Daddy, I like this cute chair. Affordable art?”

By now, I’d come to expect that pieces like this would command nothing short of $10,000. Whatever happened to the $200 ones as advertised?

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It was beginning to dawn upon me that affordable art needed to be properly defined, at least for the affordable part. Yet we could agree that the art itself was awesome.

I was about to give up and go home when we finally came across something we could call affordable art.

This was what I bought at $20:

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And this, the artist:

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The Affordable Art Fair is ongoing this weekend till Apr 19, 2015.

 

We were here:

 

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