‘I’m waiting for that eureka moment’: I join a £40,000 hunt for some Frieze masterpieces | Frieze art fair

A group of women are gathered around a stunning watercolour, arguing about all the erections it contains. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t see on ancient Greek pottery,” says one. “I think it symbolises freedom,” ventures another. But Harriet Loffler has reservations. She loves the piece we’re viewing here at Frieze art fair in London: a painting by Chinese artist Shafei Xia featuring a girl boxer, a white tiger with painted red nails, and, yes, a merry procession of breasts and penises erupting from clothes. But is it right for her gallery?

Loffler curates The Women’s Art Collection, at Murray Edwards college in Cambridge. Although the public can visit the collection for free, the building is primarily a place where female students live and work. There are religious sensitivities to think about, not to mention the potential for distraction that could occur. “I’d worry that some students would just find it funny rather than think critically about it,” says WAC assistant curator Laura Moseley.

When you’re tasked with buying an artwork for a prestigious institution – with around 600 works on display, the WAC has the largest number of works by women in Europe – there is a lot to consider. How will a new piece work with the college’s sightlines? Can it start a dialogue with existing artworks? Does it fulfil the gallery’s mission statement: “to champion artists who identify as women, to give them visibility and a voice, and promote gender equality”?

There’s another consideration: who is going to pay for it? Loffler has no budget for acquisitions and is therefore reliant on good will. Step forward Spirit Now London, a philanthropic art community headed by the magnificently named Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. For the last three years, a small group of her female members have chipped in to a £40,000 acquisition fund. They then nominate a gallery to spend this at Frieze, on the proviso that the cash goes to a female artist under 40.

In 2022, thanks to Spirit Now London, a Sylvia Snowden work became part of the collection at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and last year a large-scale installation by Bronwyn Katz was acquired for the Hepworth Wakefield. Today, 17 members of the Spirit Now London acquisition team are at Frieze’s opening morning. They are granted an hour’s early access and the plan is to leg it around the fair viewing all of the artworks on their shortlist before the crowds arrive. Each member will then vote for their favourite works in a secret ballot and Loffler will make her decision from the most popular choices.

An hour is not long to locate and view a dozen pieces, but Loffler is a force of nature. Armed with a map and a Biro-penned route, she expertly directs her troops from gallery to gallery, where salespeople deliver short speeches about each artwork. Within about 15 minutes, we have seen photographs of Bangladeshi TV sets, Persian rug-inspired works that wrestle with gender identity and an ice-white sculpture that dangles in the air so invitingly that one member has to be dragged away from trying to fondle it. There’s little time to contemplate, or even grab a coffee. “Does anybody need the toilet?” asks Loffler, striding onward as if she’s in an episode of The West Wing. “No? OK, let’s head to C9!”

My head is bursting with all this new art and info. But this purchase is more considered than it looks. Galleries submitted viable artworks to Spirit Now London in advance and Loffler and Moseley whittled them down from 54 to 25 artists. Then, during a meeting at de Clermont-Tonnerre’s house a few days before Frieze, a shortlist of 12 was created. What if they see something on the day not on the shortlist? Can Loffler buy something wildly on impulse? “No, no,” she insists. “It has to be much more structured than that.”

Not every buyer at Frieze is as restricted. When I speak to Gregor Muir, Tate’s director of international art collection, he is enthusiastic about the “fluid and frenetic” buying process at Frieze, where each year they get to spend £150,000 through a fund provided by a group called Endeavor.

In 2021, Tate had no idea they would end up acquiring Edgar Calel’s The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge (or Ru k’ ox k’ob’el jun ojer etemab’el). It hadn’t been on their shortlist because it hadn’t been made yet. On the morning of the fair, the Maya-Kaqchikel artist sourced local rocks and arranged fruit and vegetables from a local market on top of them. It wasn’t even technically on sale. Tate and the artist came to an agreement based on Mayan custom, in which the museum has custodianship of the work for 13 years (a number representing the major joints in the body).

Brokering custodian agreements based on Mayan custom isn’t the norm at these things, but what about good old-fashioned haggling? Is that the done thing here? “We have to ask for discounts as a museum,” says Muir. “We have to evidence that we secured a work at the best price for the nation. But obviously we don’t want to stray into areas where it causes discomfort for the artist. You don’t want to give someone an unpleasant experience.” A soft touch is important. If Tate are keen on an artwork, but haven’t made the final decision yet – something that must be run past director Maria Balshaw – they quietly let the gallery know of their interest to ensure nothing gets away.

Back at this year’s Frieze, Loffler is becoming apprehensive. She’s seen six or seven artworks now but says: “I’m still waiting for that eureka moment.” Paloma Proudfoot’s arresting Skin Poem catches her eye – but she has doubts about how the various segments of glazed ceramic could be fixed to the college building. “They do screw directly into a wall,” says the gallery’s salesperson. “Yes, but we’re a Grade II-listed building,” says Loffler. “We can only drill into mortar.” I get the sense that nothing gets past this curator.

Such is Loffler’s determination to find an artwork that speaks to her collection she even goes off-piste and asks the group to consider something not on the shortlist – a startling tapestry that deals with AI and female freedom. Their stringent rules get tested on more than one occasion – one gallery even offers up a piece of work that resides in South Africa rather than Frieze itself.

It’s not until we reach Bambou Gili’s painting Legally Stev that the tension lifts. Loffler doesn’t need to tell me this is her eureka moment – I hear her gasps. In dazzling blues and greens, Gili’s painting of her friend reclining on a bed speaks to the solitude of student life but also the solidarity of female friendship. The fact she’s staring at a mobile phone gives it a modern spin.

From here, things start to fall into place. Everyone is stunned by Asemahle Ntlonti’s layering of paint, paper and thread in a work called Uhambo that “tells the story of South Africa”. And after Loffler decides that Xia’s erection-heavy piece isn’t suitable for college walls, the artist’s gallery goes into a frenzy to show some less erotic works hiding out in a back room. White gloves are swiftly donned as a variety of paintings and ceramics are unveiled on the floor.

“It’s like Christmas morning at Frieze,” exclaims one Spirit Now London member. Indeed, in the excitement, one woman from the group snaps up a small watercolour for her own private collection. Another treats herself to a delightful ceramic tiger on a ball. Luckily for Loffler, the work she likes the most remains: a topless woman cradling a tiger and holding a candlestick.

With all the artworks viewed, I head off to meet the Tate team and see how their Frieze splurge went. In a tiny room behind a door just next to Gili’s painting, their outfit (including two guest curators) are beavering away on laptops, finalising the acquisition of numerous works. The team worked last night to go over every item to make sure “no stone was left unturned”. Then they all met today at 8.30am for a series of heated discussions regarding which ones to buy: two paintings, including the charming The Spaghetti House, from self-taught British-Bengali painter Mohammed Z Rahman; a 17-panel piece comprised of natural pigment on tree bark by Naminapu Maymuru-White, a senior Yolŋu artist of North East Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia; a 1969 work by the Czech surrealist Eva Švankmajerová that creates an interesting dialogue with the works Tate already have; and a series of three pastels by Bani Abidi, a Pakistani artist based in Berlin who depicted conversations around Gaza with various activist friends.

This year, Tate seem to have adhered to the shortlist. In contrast, by the time Spirit Now London head to their fancy lunch at Ham Yard to vote, the whole thing seems completely up in the air.

Loffler gives a speech outlining the reasons why she’d love to acquire Gili, Ntlonti or Xia’s work. But from here it’s out of her hands. I know that several members fell hard for Han Bing’s dreamlike evocations of Paris, an artwork Loffler thought “looked stunning” but wouldn’t be right for her collection. As everyone starts writing down their two favourite artists on slips of paper, I whisper to her: “What happens if they all go for something you don’t really want?” “I’m not actually sure,” she says, looking a little nervous for the first time today.

She needn’t have worried. The women of Spirit Now London have voted for artists in line with Loffler’s speech. And the good news is that the £40,000 budget means Loffler can afford to buy work from all three of them without even having to haggle. I check my phone: we’ve covered 10,000 steps at Frieze alone. But perhaps most impressive is the way this warm community of art lovers have put aside their own egos and personal preferences to select the pieces they know will work best for the WAC.

I do still have a question, though. After discounting Shafei’s epic watercolour on the grounds of it being too pornographic, Loffler ended up buying the picture of the tiger-cradling woman grasping a candlestick. It hasn’t escaped my attention that the candle in question looks rather like, well, you can guess. Loffler smiles and shrugs, looking totally relaxed about it. Sometimes even the most stringent rules are made to be broken.