Going back to something you loved the first time round is a risky business. Either it lives up to the memory, or you spend the whole evening quietly comparing, like bumping into an ex at a party and checking whether they’ve aged better than you have. So when British Art Fair rolled back into the Saatchi Gallery this September, with Digitalism, its digital art section, now in its third year, I arrived carrying a fair amount of baggage. Last year I was thrilled to be a part of it, which meant I turned up with both a soft spot and a scorecard.
Thankfully, the scorecard was redundant within minutes, and I ended up going back more than once, with a rotating cast of friends and creatives from in and around the art world, which is either dedication or an inability to leave a good party, depending on who you ask.
Digitalism, curated by Rebekah Tolley, came back bigger, better and far more immersive than last year. It was fantastic to see two of my favourite artists, and favourite people, Dead Chainsaw and Mr Relative, the latter’s tidal waves built from crowds of tiny bodies still pulling off that slightly unnerving trick where you lean in for a closer look and realise you’ve become part of the crowd. Equally exciting were the newcomers, including Shir Daniel, Ventcislava Nekova and Natalia Stojkova‘s Craft Digitalism: The Body as an Archive.
AI is no longer the differentiator in art; everyone has the keys to the same toy box now, so a one-click wonder isn’t going to stop me in my tracks, which, I hasten to add, these artists are not. What interests me is how you think: what you’re trying to say, and how effectively you say it. After that, it’s how you apply it, and whether you can make something intrusive, structural and provoking that simply couldn’t exist as a flat image on a wall.
Which is exactly why the installation from Shir and co was such a welcome relief – you can’t ‘scroll’ past something you have to physically walk around. It came in multiple elements, and half the pleasure was in the discovery, because no single angle gave the whole game away. The piece that stopped me was a screen, the kind of object we’d normally use to divide a space, except this one had a dancer’s silhouette cut clean through it. It looked like metal, cold and immovable, until you realised it was made of wood, and that, for me, is the whole point: the barriers that seem most impenetrable, whether physical or ideological, are often far less solid than they look, and our humanity and freedom shouldn’t be stopped by them. We are all fluid, and we can dart between two existing and contradictory states while still holding on to who we are. It was fragile too: the artists told me the cutouts had weakened it so much that keeping the screen standing was a challenge in itself. Perhaps there’s something deeply profound in that, but I’ll leave that one with you.
Dead Chainsaw, meanwhile, is proof that a flat image can still get under your skin if the thinking is sharp enough. Ferg (that’s Dead Chainsaw to you) – love you mate – your work is deeply provocative and hideous in equal measure: an IKEA gas mask, a head shrink-wrapped in a Tesco carrier bag, a human heart vacuum-packed on a supermarket tray like a prime Wagyu fillet about to be discounted, then snapped up on Too Good To Go. While I sincerely hope the future isn’t as bleak as your nostalgic retro-futurism suggests, in a warped way, part of me almost hopes it is. The organic yet mechanical commentary, and the products themselves, are things I want to own but deeply fear.
Beyond Digitalism, I made my way across every floor, and the rest of the fair more than held its own. Phil Snow‘s book prints blew my socks clean off, and they’re far cleverer than they first let on. Shelf upon shelf of vintage spines, so convincing you’d swear you could pull one out, with titles that read like a lifetime of overthinking – What Is This Thing Called Love?, Why Do I Feel Like an Imposter?, Why Did Freud Reject God? Then you clock that each colour-blocked shelf alludes to a different Tube line, and suddenly you’re standing there decoding spines like an orthopaedic surgeon looking at an X-Ray of a prickle of hedgehogs. I won’t spoil any more than that, because I’d urge everyone to seek these pieces out and explore them for themselves.
It was a joy to catch Christina Schek, and at the best possible moment, right as her magnificent and playful piece, a polka-dotted woman in a red swimming cap puckering up to a shoal of goldfish, sold. A huge shoutout too to Malene Hartmann Rasmussen‘s Egg Head pieces, all gold horns, drowsy eyes and a grin full of teeth where the forehead should be. In my humble opinion, they should be cast as the foreboding statue heads in a future season of The White Lotus.
Then there was the work nobody hung. A photographer friend and I found ourselves strangely drawn to the plethora of ladders tucked away at the side of one gallery, leaning against the wall with such quiet conviction that it felt like a discreet installation in and of itself. We dubbed it Ladder Lot 11. Nobody bid, more fool them.
A special mention must go to Tom from Silk and Dry Events, who ran the Whitebox sampling stand and kept the top floor atmospheric and the audience ABV at a curatorially appropriate level. I may have enjoyed a couple, because any more and I’d have rapidly descended from the top floor to the basement, most likely in an inelegant fashion, via the main stairwell.
And a final thank you to Eames Fine Art for one of my favourite conversations of the whole fair, which wandered from Cornwall to Freud, including two originals I was lucky enough to see up close, and then, somehow, to confectionery. It all started when I mentioned that Barrington Tobin‘s piece made me think of Irn Bru, which, rather than earning me a polite smile and a swift exit, led to one of the seasoned gallerists showing me a piece that reminded them of a mint Aero. See, art doesn’t have to be stuffy.
These are to name but a few – the entire show was magnificent from top to bottom, and bottom to top. Needless to say, I’m already intensely looking forward to next year, so Saatchi, save me a ladder, and Macallan, save me a bottle.
Victoria Russell
For more info visit www.britishartfair.co.uk/fair-2026