When is an auction not an auction? Raising money for not-for-profit art fair Sluice

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Biannual art fair for emerging art teams up with Paddle8 to raise funds for its third iteration in London this year

The notion of a not-for-profit art fair might sound as paradoxical as a not-for-profit drug dealer. But if contemporary art is your high, prepare to be doubly surprised by the latest development from the initiative known as Sluice.

In its first two iterations, in 2011 and 2013, this small fair went up against Frieze. It was in the same month, in the same city, but in a completely different spirit.

The considerable buzz at these biannual events was around emerging art and emerging connections between the UK’s less commercial galleries, curators and artists.

Sluice should be back in 2015, but even non-capitalists need some ready cash. So directors Karl England and Ben Street are fighting fire with fire and staging an auction through online bidding platform Paddle8.

The event has IRL support from London's Hospital Club, where the works have hung since last week. The final hammer falls at 9.30pm on January 29.

Some 37 artists have donated work to the appeal, including Anna Freeman Bentley, Gordon Shrigley and Caroline Walker.

In most cases, supporters have rallied in support of the event with lo-fi Painting rather than the glossy fare one might encounter at Sotheby’s.

Prices at the time of writing range from £50 for a drawing by Daniel Salisbury to £1,400 for the painting by Freeman Bentley.

Sluice may be taking an art world mechanism and holding it to the light, but the auction is still behaving like an auction. It bodes well for a fair which is and isn’t one.

• All lots can be viewed in the Hospital Club, Covent Garden, until January 30 2015. Read more about Sluice on their website here and view the auction on the Paddle8 site here.

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Visit Mark Sheerin's contemporary art blog and follow him on Twitter.

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk//art/painting-and-drawing/art513959-when-is-an-auction-not-an-auction-raising-money-for-not-for-profit-art-fair-sluice