Welcome to Amplify with Alexandra Steinacker-Clark, my monthly column for VOLTA Art Fair. You can expect art market musings, fun interviews, and unserious opinions (as our passion and earnestness for the arts can lead us to take ourselves too seriously at times). After working in auction houses and galleries over the past 8 years, and with the scars to prove it, I now run the All About Art Podcast full-time. I produce one episode per month, having interviewed the likes of Ell Pennick, founder of Guts Gallery, art criticism duo The White Pube, and Deputy Director of the Courtauld Dr. Dorothy Price to name just a few recent guests. I do this alongside directing NXT GEN, a programme for emerging arts professionals with the aim of demystifying the professional arts sector in collaboration with the Association of Women in the Arts. This first piece for VOLTA is on the topic of art fairs - I know, how unpredictable, right? I wanted to begin this column by considering why they are useful, where there is room for improvement, and why I think fairs like VOLTA are special.

Let’s start with the basic question: What is an art fair?


One way I could answer that question is to say it’s a large amalgamation of galleries coming together under one roof. This shifts the focus from being present in their gallery spaces to standing at their individual booths all day, every day, for the few days the art fair is running. Depending on the focus of the fair, it’s where collectors and art lovers can come and see a wide range of emerging to established galleries and their artists, one next to the other, row after row. Some booths contain solo presentations, meaning works by only one artist are exhibited, whilst some galleries take works by a variety of artists to show at their booths.

Another way I could answer that question is to acknowledge they are one of the biggest contributors to the art market, with some participating galleries earning the revenue they need to cover their overheads for the rest of the year. On the flip side of that, the larger fairs can often be extremely costly to participate in and require a lot of time, energy, and resources that can be both harmful to small gallery teams as well as the art world’s carbon footprint. With a large concentration of wealth being in the top few percent of the population, issues of funding versus artistic expression is one that the art world is all too familiar with - not just in relation to art fairs, but for artists, galleries, project spaces, and museums alike. Boutique fairs like VOLTA offer specialized experiences to collectors through an approach that prioritizes showing art that reflects the world we live in today. They encourage disruption to the traditional art fair model while also thinking deeply about the long-term growth of the international galleries that exhibit at their fairs in the major art market cities. That being said, all art fairs are incredibly important for the art ecosystem - the buzz is palpable and it’s amazing to have the ability to view so much art all in one place… It's full of excitement!

VOLTA shows galleries that support emerging to mid-career artists, and looking ahead to 2025, this is exactly the spot in the market that appears to be thriving. I was listening to the Art Newspaper’s ‘A Week in Art’ with Ben Luke and it was their 2024 In Review episode. Kabir Jhala, the art market editor at The Art Newspaper stated that, although 2024 was a tough year for the upper markets and emerging galleries in some instances, the lower & mid-tier art markets (the under-$50,000 market was referenced in this particular instance) is seeing a sustained growth through online sales and new people entering the market. This echoes VOLTA’s Artistic Director, Lee Cavaliere’s statement in their 2025 Future Forecast: “While there's a perception galleries are playing it safe in a soft market, there’s this incredible energy in the emerging and mid-career space. Artists and galleries are embracing activism, using their work to tackle the tough questions of our times.”

I personally get far more excited about emerging and mid-tier galleries, exhibiting artists that are at an incredibly exciting point in their careers. These artists often sell at prices that more people would be able to afford. As much as I wish I could buy some of the artworks in blue-chip galleries selling for millions, my heart really beats for the artists whose studios I have visited, whose practices I have seen develop in the last few years, and who are making art that reflects the times we live in now - whether it’s a direct reference to socio political happenings, Gen Z humor and meme culture (it will always get a chuckle out of me) or something that doesn’t have such overt references, you feel the contemporaneity in the pulse of the works. These are the artists exhibiting at fairs like VOLTA, so although I will always want to pop by the established blue-chip fairs, this high-quality satellite fair is really where you’ll find me. 

1. Podcast Episode of A Week In Art by The Art Newspaper, min 45 [https://open.spotify.com/episode/0EbsUKeQ4qtD5RLqJrGP2B?si=ba41165aff9d4994]

2. VOLTA Future Forecast - Top 5 trends of 2025 [https://www.voltaartfairs.com/journal/future-forecast-2025]

Amplify is a new, monthly column produced by VOLTA and written by Alexandra Steinacker-Clark. Sign up to the VOLTA newsletter to receive it to your inbox.