The London Art Fair will celebrate its 21st birthday with its biggest ever range of galleries when it opens today.

There will be more than 100 stands with 1,000 artists' work on sale at the Business Design Centre in Islington. Organisers expect to attract up to 25,000 visitors.

Special events include exhibitions of photography from the Ukraine and China, and contemporary sculpture from India.

Visitors can browse art from late 20th century British greats LS Lowry, Barbara Hepworth and Patrick Heron alongside emerging artists like Nina Murdoch and Wang Wei.

Adam Dant will be producing on-the-spot portraits of visitors to raise money for The House Of Fairy Tales, a not-for-profit firm set up by artist Gavin Turk to champion art for families.

Dant, 41, who lives in Shoreditch, is best known for creating cartoon newspaper Donald Parsnips' Daily Journal. For £250, he will paint visitors as a beauty or a beast, or for £450 you can be captured in sepia ink as both.

He said: “I've drawn in public before. India is the worst place because you end up with a crowd of 50 people around you, but I'm used to it.
“It's more like a performance. It really keeps you on your toes as an artist and it's a bit of a luxury to be sat in a space just drawing instead of doing all the extraneous things that go with being an artist.”

He found about half of people chose to be a beauty, and half a beast. Young children were the most difficult subjects, he added.

“It's not because they move,” he said. “Toddlers are the worst because after a while, they all look the same.” Other House Of Fairy Tales events include drawing workshops by Fiona Banner, an artist who presented a printed description of a pornographic film for the Turner Prize.

Jonathan Burton, the fair's director, said there were 112 galleries, compared with 105 last year, despite the difficult economic situation.

“We feel fairly upbeat and positive about this. When you speak to the galleries, what they say is they're not expecting to have the best fair they have ever had. Clearly it would be naive to think that circumstances are such that that would come to pass. But we are still expecting 22,000 to 25,000 visitors.”

About 24,000 people attended the fair last year.
Some artworks are expected to sell out even before the fair opens its doors. A new print, Empire State, by cult Bristol artist Nick Walker is widely tipped to go quickly. It will be in a limited edition of 175 for £475.

Outside the fair, Rob and Nick Carter, a husband-and-wife team, have created what they describe as “images without cameras and paintings without brushes”. It is a billboard installation of 42 neon words on a white board.

Photo50 is a display of 50 photographs from around the world curated by students on the curating programme at Goldsmiths.

Another highlight is a booth offering limited edition video art for £20.

The fair, at the design centre in Upper Street, kicks off with a VIP reception today before a preview evening for the public costing £25. Normal ticket prices are £11 in advance and £15 on the door. The last day is Saturday.