The art world may be a pink-collar industry, with women making up an estimated 75% of the workforce, but women in leadership roles—including at galleries—are still in the minority. Enter Echo Soho, a new art fair for female-led galleries, which launched this week in a bid to tackle this imbalance.
The point is to address some of the systemic challenges that women face
“The point is to address some of the systemic challenges that women face in the art world. By focusing on female-led galleries we felt there would be more of a lasting impact and legacy. We didn’t want it to be a flash-in-the-pan tokenistic thing,” says Charlotte Leseberg Smith, an associate director at Echo Soho and Soho Revue, the gallery launched by India Rose James in 2019. The new fair is James’s brainchild.
It was not stipulated that galleries bring female artists, though the overwhelming majority have. (Two galleries, Wilder and Gillian Jason, exclusively deal in women.) Lamb Gallery has brought three small paintings by Bea Bonafini (priced at £3,500 each), while Alice Black is showing an installation by Rachael Louise Bailey incorporating, among other things, wallpaper designed from washed-up plastic oyster sacks and a vitrine of Louise Bourgeois-esque intestines. The latter work sold on the opening day for £5,500 to “a significant collection of female artists”, says gallery owner Alice Black.
Liminal Gallery, based in Margate, is the only gallery not from London. It is showing two artists who work in coloured pencil: Maud Whatley and Fipsi Seilern. “Bringing women artists felt like the right thing to do, because this is a celebration of women in the art world and that doesn’t happen all that often,” says the gallery’s founder Louise Fitzjohn. “A lot of art fairs can be competitive, but this is a real community. We’ve got a group of amazing powerhouse women in a room supporting each other.”
Affordable and accessible
The cost of participating is extremely affordable: £450 for a wall and from £850 for a stand. James says she wanted to make it as accessible as possible, even bringing in art handlers from her own gallery to help with the install. With 12 galleries, Echo Soho takes place across two floors of Artists House, a Georgian townhouse that is home to Soho Revue’s residency programme. The building is owned by Soho Estates, the property empire owned by James’s family, which was founded by her grandfather, the property developer and pornographer Paul Raymond.
James says the response from galleries already wanting to take part next year means she may have to double the current fair’s size. Ultimately, she says, she would love to pitch a tent in Soho Square and create a Frieze-style spin off. “That would be the dream, but we are starting small.”
