Latitudes Art Fair shows a shift in buyer profiles and an expanding art audience

Everything about Latitudes turns traditional art fairs on their heads, from the immersive venue to the gritty urban environment, making it a visitors’ delight

- By Feriel Haffajee

Lucy MacGarry and Roberta Coci are the co-founders of Latitudes Online, which hosts the annual RMB Latitudes Art Fair.

The event took place in May and opened the arts season in Joburg. The two founders answer questions about fine arts and the inner city and how the collector base is shifting.

FH: Shepstone Gardens in Mountain View is known as a beautiful wedding venue. How did you realise that it could be a venue for an arts fair — it’s not an obvious choice?

Lucy MacGarry: That’s exactly what drew us to it — the fact that it wasn’t an obvious choice. At Latitudes, we're always looking for ways to challenge traditional models, and Shepstone Gardens offered us the opportunity to create a fair experience that was more immersive, more intimate and more joyful than the conventional white-cube format.

Visitors are always struck by its layered, almost surreal beauty, and reimagining it as a platform for contemporary African art felt both subversive and poetic.

FH: And it’s in the inner city, just off Louis Botha Avenue, which is a rather gritty part of town. Did you want to bring arts to the inner city?

LM: Absolutely. We believe art belongs in the city, not just in pristine suburbs or elite institutions. Louis Botha is gritty, but it’s also real. Our goal has always been to bring the arts closer to where people are, rather than expecting them to come to where the arts have traditionally been.