Curators select works by under-represented groups for Tate, while Art Council Collection purchases focus on early-to mid-career artists
The Frieze Tate Fund gives £150,000 to a panel of Tate and international curators who are given early access to Frieze and Frieze Masters to select works for Tate’s collection. It has been supported for the ninth year by the sports and entertainment company Endeavor, the majority owners of Frieze. This year the Tate team were joined by Nicole Yip, the director of Spike Island gallery, Bristol, and Raphael Fonseca, the curator of Modern and contemporary Latin American art at the Denver Art Museum. Seven works by four artists were purchased, with the aim of choosing works that spoke for “under-represented histories”.
From Frieze London the group chose a piece made from natural pigment on stringy bark by Naminapu Maymuru-White (from Sullivan+Strumpf/Breguet), her first work to enter an institution outside her native Australia. They also bought two paintings by the young London-based Mohammed Z Rahman (Phillida Reid) who is also entering Tate’s collection for the first time, as well as a trio of works on paper by Bani Abidi (Experimenter, see story left), made last year in response to the conflict in Gaza. At Frieze Masters the panel made one purchase, a painting by the Czech Surrealist Eva Švankmajerová from The Gallery of Everything.
Now in its second year, the Arts Council Collection’s £40,000 acquisitions fund at Frieze is dedicated to supporting early- to mid-career and overlooked UK-based artists. Entering the collection from this year’s Frieze are works by Nour Jaouda (Union Pacific Gallery), Nicole Wermers (Herald St) and Shaqúelle Whyte (Pippy Houldsworth).
Nour Jaouda is also one of two artists purchased from Frieze London by the Contemporary Art Society for the Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire, the other being Haegue Yang (Kukje Gallery).
