Fair Play, a new artist-first art fair that removes booth fees entirely, has announced the 65 artists selected for its debut edition at One Marylebone this October, with work starting at £200.
Fair Play was founded by Ryan Stanier, who spent over 15 years building The Other Art Fair into the world’s largest artist-led art event before departing in 2024. His new venture reimagines that model with a single significant change: no upfront booth fees. Artists take on no financial risk to exhibit, and sell directly to collectors and visitors across the fair’s run.
The 65 artists were chosen from an open call by a selection committee spanning Kate Bryan (Chief Art Director at Soho House), Jo Baring (Director of the Ingram Collection of Modern British & Contemporary Art, and founder of the Ingram Prize), Lison Sabrina Musset (curator and co-founder of The Collective Makers) and Charlotte and Angus Buchanan of Buchanan Studio. Seventy per cent of the selected artists are women, more than 60 per cent have held solo exhibitions, and the lineup spans over 15 countries and more than 40 per cent alumni of London’s leading art schools, including the RCA, Central Saint Martins, the Slade and Goldsmiths.
Established names and career-stage artists on the same platform
The lineup mixes established names with emerging and graduate artists. Curtis Holder, winner of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year (2020) and recipient of the John Ruskin Prize (2024), shows tender, dialogue-led graphite and coloured pencil portraits that bring visibility to stories that are often overlooked. Also exhibiting are Charlotte Mei, winner of NOW Gallery’s Future Space Award (2024) and previously commissioned by Hermès, Nike and Ferragamo; Fujiko Rose, winner of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year (2019); Ingram Prize finalist Jennifer Nieuwland (2025) and 2021 winner James Dearlove; and Robert Montgomery, whose text-based public art has been shown at the Louvre.
Elsewhere, the selection groups artists loosely by theme rather than medium. A cluster of painters and sculptors, including Ditte Blohm, Marcelina Amelia and Gavin Dobson, work through the body, identity and intimacy. Another group, among them Yasser Claud-Ennin, Leily Moghtader Mojdehi and Shirin Fathi, draws on diasporic heritage and family archive. Claud-Ennin’s multidisciplinary painting and textile work pulls on inherited West African textiles from his Nigerian-Ghanaian heritage to consider how memory is carried, and changed, across generations and distance.
A further strand leans into nature, fantasy and dreamlike imagery. Seana Gavin, whose collage Underwater world fronts the fair’s own announcement, works primarily in collage and photography, using found photographic material from vintage books to build otherworldly scenes where past and future coexist. She’s joined by Marilyn Clark, who uses long-exposure photography to capture nature dissolving into blur, and South Korean artist Sunju Jin, currently also showing as part of The Sun and The Moon at the Saatchi Gallery.
A programme to be confirmed, and a presale before general tickets go up
Fair Play will run alongside a wider programme of music, performances and immersive experiences, with details due in early September. El Rayo Tequila and estate agency House Collective are the fair’s drinks and lifestyle partners respectively.
A limited number of £15 tickets go on presale from Wednesday 2 September, £11 cheaper than the £26 general admission price that follows from Thursday 3 September. Visitors can register for presale access at fairplayartfair.com.
The London x London Take: the no-booth-fee model is the genuinely interesting part of this launch, it’s a direct response to what’s historically made art fairs a hard, expensive gamble for artists at the start of their careers, and it means the 65 names here were chosen purely on the strength of the work rather than who could afford a stand. With artworks starting at £200 and over 60 per cent of the artists already holding solo show track records, this reads as a genuine way to start a collection rather than just browse one. We’d register for presale access now, £15 versus £26 is worth having in the diary before 2 September.
Need to know
- When: Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 October 2026. Thursday 5pm–10pm, Friday and Saturday 11am–7pm, Sunday 11am–6pm
- Where: One Marylebone, 1 Marylebone Road, London NW1 4AQ
- Price: £26 general admission; a limited number of £15 presale tickets are available from 2 September
- More info: fairplayartfair.com
