Art13 London has announced the gallery line up for London First, a curated section of the Fair featuring 17 young galleries under six years old from across the globe who will be participating at a London fair for the first time. London First will be a significant focus within Art13 London, celebrating the Fair’s global ethos and its passionate commitment to showcase young galleries to an international audience. As well as providing an opportunity for these emerging galleries to exhibit on a global stage, London First will offer visitors the chance to discover new talent from across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and America, in addition to the UK, asserting the Fair’s broad global reach and confirming the city’s status as one of the world’s leading contemporary art centres. The selected galleries share a very international outlook, whether it be a mission to present international artists in their respective regions, or plans to establish new spaces in foreign territories.

The selection has been advised by leading curator and academic, Lisa Le Feuvre, Head of Sculpture Studies at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and co-curator of ‘British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet’, which toured the UK in 2010. Lisa Le Feuvre commented “The art world has always been international, with exchanges between artists, collectors and galleries unlimited by national boundaries. Art13 London is setting out to build on this, and to make new connections that will sustain into the future. By giving emerging galleries from across the world a new platform in Europe, and introducing them to international collectors, curators and critics, our selection of galleries has been made to initiate new conversations and possibilities.”

Galleries selected for London First from the UK include Galerie8, IMT Gallery, and Patrick Heide Contemporary Art. Highlights include work by Károly Keserü, Hans Kotter and Kate Terry at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, and work by David Burrows, NaoKo TakaHashi, Carlos Noronha Feio and Gordon Shrigley at IMT Gallery. Galleries from the US will include Scaramouche, New York, who will present new sculptural work by Italian artist Alessandro Brighetti, and a series of drawings, montages and photography by Pakistani artist Seher Shah.

European galleries selected for London First include Molnár Ani Gallery, Hungary, Aranapoveda Gallery, Spain, Dukan & Hourdequin, France, Galerie Martin Kudlek, Germany, rahncontemporary, Switzerland, Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Belgium, Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Estonia and Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Austria. For London First, Galerie Tatjana Pieters will bring together works by three emerging Belgian artists, collectively labeled ‘The New Candour’ by art critic Hans Theys.

Later this year, Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, based in Gratz, Austria will launch a second space in the Philippines, which will focus on video and multi-media installations. For London First, the gallery will present two young installation artists from Manila; Poklong Anading and Yason Banal. Visitors to the London First section of the Fair will view Anading’s video installation revolving around the memories, dreams and expectations of migrant workers in Asia (a project introduced at the Gwangju Biennale 2012), alongside Banal’s presentation, which will incorporate sculpture, photography and performance. Further highlights from European galleries include a solo presentation of work by British artist Nina Fowler at Dukan & Hourdequin, Paris, featuring work on paper and sculpture based on sourced images of iconic Hollywood scenes and figures.

The Middle Eastern galleries selected for the initiative include Athr Gallery, Saudi Arabia and Lawrie Shabibi, UAE. Athr Gallery, located in Jeddah, will stage a solo presentation of a Palestinian artist’s work at London First. Hazem Harb will explore themes including war, loss, trauma, human vulnerability and global instability through his multi-media, conceptual works, ranging from large-scale paintings through to digital photography and video.

From South Africa, Brundyn + Gonsalves, Cape Town, will show the collaborative work of Zwelethu Mthethwa and Louis Jansen van Vuuren. The mixed media compositions of the South African artists, one a photographer and Zulu, the other a painter and Afrikaner, attempt to enhance an inherent concept through points of confluence and visual dialogue, celebrating the artists’ common heritage as well as differing backgrounds.

The galleries from Asia selected for the section include Gallery Em, South Korea and Chan Hampe Gallery, Singapore. Gallery Em, based in Seoul, will stage a two-person stand featuring the Korean artist Jae Yong Rhee and the German artist Jörg Obergfell. The presentation will foreground the notion of a dialogue between West and East that is central to the concept of the fair.

The Advisory Board for the inaugural edition of the Fair already features strong international representation, with Asian collectors and curators including Li Bing, Thomas Shao, Sunhee Kim, and Ramin Salsali. Additional members from Europe include Frank Cohen, Philip Dodd (Chair), Dominique and Sylvain Levy, and Sydney Picasso.