A new fund of at least £40,000 ($49,000) has been launched for the Arts Council Collection to acquire work by early career and overlooked U.K.-based artists at Frieze London. The artists selected today for the fund’s inaugural year were Julianknxx, Anne Tallentire, Mark Corfield-Moore, and Tanoa Sasraku.

The new Frieze fund, which has been made available by a select group of patrons, including Tala Cingillioglu, Zelie Walker-Noble, Suling Mead, and the Thornton family, comes at a time when the U.K.’s culture sector has faced catastrophic cuts in public funding. London was hit particularly hard when the annual funding for 2023-26 funnelled money into regional institutions.

“Following the Arts Council’s devastating cuts last year, philanthropic initiatives are more necessary than ever,” a spokesperson for Frieze told The Telegraph when the fund was announced. The selection committee scouting the booths for up-and-coming artists at this year’s Frieze London included the Hayward Gallery’s director Ralph Rugoff, the writer and editor for Frieze magazine Vanessa Peterson, the artist John Walter, and program director at Jerwood Arts, Harriet Cooper.

The Sierra Leonian artist Julianknxx’s is talk of the town in London at the moment, with his moving image work Chorus in Rememory of Flights (2023) that explores the Black Diasporic experience currently being exhibited at the Barbican’s Curve gallery until February 11, 2024. His work is also included in “A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography” at Tate Modern through January 14, 2024. His new film Black Room (2023), presented by Edel Assanti gallery in the Galleries sector, was quickly snapped up by the collection’s acquisition committee.

Anne Tallentire, These Aggregations 2 (2000) at “But this material…” at the MAC in Belfast in 2021. Photo courtesy of the MAC, Belfast.

Now in her 70s, Anne Tallentire has for decades been quietly drawing attention for her low-key artworks that are often made of everyday practical materials like string, screws and gaffer tape. She received a solo exhibition at the MAC in Belfast in 2021 and her work is currently on display in the Lavery Studio at Cromwell Place until October 15. The piece These Aggregations 2 (2000), a matching set of multi-colored boards that lean delicately against the wall at Hollybush Gardens gallery, also in the Galleries sector, has now entered the Arts Council Collection.

Tanoa Sasraku, Jacket Front R (2023) at Frieze London 2023. Photo courtesy the artist.

The artist Tanoa Sasraku has been turning heads for her “terratypes,” a unique hybrid medium that combines various methods like textile, painting, sculpture and print-making, as well as films like O’Pierrot (2019), through which she explored racist stereotypes and the Black British experience. Her work Jacket Front R (2023), offered as part of a solo presentation at Vardaxoglou, in Frieze’s focus section, was made with the unlikely combination of newsprint, foraged Cornish and Ghanaian earth pigments, tailor’s chalk, thread, and St Ives seawater.

Mark Corfield-Moore, Gilded (2023) at Frieze London 2023. Photo courtesy the artist.

Mark Corfield-Moore, who paints directly onto had woven textiles on canvas, was one of the shortlisted artists for this year’s John Moore Painting Prize. The Arts Council Collection acquired Gilded (2023), which can be found in the entrance corridor leading into the fair as part of a display by Outset. The Outset Contemporary Art Fund is a charity that set up an acquisition fund for Tate at the very first Frieze London in 2003. Now, it is spotlighting 19 artists who don’t yet have gallery representation, all of whom were recipients of the Studiomakers Prize, and benefitted from free studio space for a year as part of Outset’s Studiomakers initiative.

Patrons supporting the fund include Tala Cingillioglu from Cingilli Collection, Zelie Walker-Noble, independent art advisor and collector, Suling Mead, board member for Contemporary Art Society, and the Thornton family. Mead called the fund an important supporter of “early career and overlooked artists” that enables them “to become a part of its history and future.”

Founded in 1946, the Arts Council Collection is a national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art with a focus on supporting promising emerging artists.

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