It’s a well known fact that the art world runs on relationships of all flavours. And when times are lean and public funding is on the dwindle, it makes sense to get collegiate. This was certainly the ethos underpinning at last night’s (3 May) grand opening of the ZAP shop in a prime Mayfair premises just a couple of doors down from Thaddaeus Ropac’s palatial new gallery on Dover Street. Leading UK institutions including the Liverpool Biennial, Glasgow International, the Baltic in Gateshead, and London’s Studio Voltaire and Serpentine Galleries, all clubbed together to pool their wares—ranging from Rachel Maclean pins for under £10 to a set of ten Matt Connors prints for £6000—and raise some much-needed funds.
The instigator of this philanthropic pop-up was the Zabludowicz Collection who were also hosting the event. In addition to pieces by such luminaries as Ed Atkins, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Nicole Wermers, works by a slew of young artists—some barely out of art school—had been commissioned especially for the occasion. Even though Frieze New York and a constellation of more hard-nosed commercial events were simultaneously in full swing across the Atlantic, the likes of Michaela de Pury, Brian Boylan, Simon Lee and Sadie Coles’s Pauline Daly all flocked to spend and buy. And for those currently pulled across the pond, ZAP will still be selling wares throughout the month of May as young art makes a welcome return to Dover Street.
A few streets away from this heart-warming display of institutional unity, more familial relationships were being aired in a touching display of sisterly affection at Bonhams. Here, the perennially youthful Joan Collins was very much in evidence to support the 1000-lot sale from the estate of her late sister, the author Jackie Collins who died from breast cancer in 2015. The possessions of the Beverley Hills-based pioneer of the high octane “bonkbuster” novel (she wrote 32), were the epitome of Hollywood glitz. There was an abundance of art deco statuettes along with some questionable paintings of stars of the silver screen, but which also demonstrated an endearingly down-home fondness for the gently bawdy works of folksy British painter Beryl Cook. However, it was the jewellery that really stole the show. Guests, including the comedian Julian Clary and socialites Nancy Dell’Olio and Tamara Beckwith, were drawn like moths to a dazzling array of diamonds and emeralds that would have been the envy of even Jackie’s most aspirational of heroines. Joan, however, was discretely wearing her own.