Ahead of this year's Frieze Art Fair, we spoke with London-based art dealer and gallerist Tristan Hoare to ask for his insights on navigating large art fairs and finding your own rhythm.

Your gallery has a distinct curation of artists and a strong point of view on art in today's digitally saturated world. Could you explain what your gallery represents, its core point of view on the role of art and what someone coming to acquire art from you might expect to find?

Three things that are very important to me, materials, skill, beauty and the way that I try to present the artists or artworks that I'm presenting in the gallery are with a view to telling a story. Storytelling is important to me, and I think about how the viewer might learn, engage and enjoy in a satisfying way when they walk into the gallery.

This year, I'm doing 1-54 and PAD, the latter of which has more of an emphasis on objects and design. It's held at Barclay Square, which I very much like; it's smaller and intimate. I've done Frieze Masters in the past. The artists I'm showing at 1-54 are Tristano di Robinlant, a brilliant glass artist, who makes ethereal and poetic shapes in Murano glass (he currently has an exhibition on at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice). I'll combine his work with botanical piece by Sydney Albertini, who works from the imagination and paints wonderful almost psychedelic, very imaginative botanical visions on craft paper, and those will be combined with more direct botanical references by Kaori Tatebayashi, who only works in season in front of the plant, and makes everything by hand, modelling clay by hand and copying these plants, we will be showing a large wall, a four metre installation of her life size irises as well as two very tall and beautiful foxgloves.

And then I will combine that with Sussy Cazalet, who creates beautiful tapestries in a modernist style, incorporating her own unique elements. Her early fascination with medieval tapestries, along with a more recent appreciation for Alexander Calder's wall hangings, inspired Cazalet to journey through India and Africa in search of master weavers. Along the way, she established relationships with local female collectives that have consistently transformed her numerous watercolour studies into woven art pieces. The distinctive colour palette of her tapestries, featuring rich shades of hot terracotta and burnt sienna, reflects Cazalet's connection to the heat of the sun and its associated intensity. This vibrant energy is tempered by a sense of linearity and geometry, which she describes as "an attempt to calm the chaos."

What would be your top tips for Frieze, the artists and events to look out for?

Take your time to explore; to me, seeing art is about mood, and if you're calm and have the time, you can truly enjoy it. Then you can discover artists and really develop your interests. There's a growing interest in Aboriginal artists and the founding people of pre-colonial times. Some of these artists are truly wonderful, with vivid and fresh styles. I expect a strong representation of these overlooked artists at Frieze.

What will you be presenting as part of this year's exciting 1-54 African Art Fair?

We're presenting Gora Mbengue, a wonderful glass artist, who specialises in souwère painting and reverse glass painting. This tradition originated in Lebanon in the 19th century and was later adopted by local artists. He has an absolutely wonderful style, very colourful, very observant of birds and plants around him as well as social situations around him, and he's got enormous humour and vibrancy about his works. We will present about 30 of his works, all from the 1980s.
Alongside Mbengue, the presentation features Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta - two iconic photographers whose works have been central to the gallery's program since its inception. Their celebrated portraits of mid-20th-century Mali provide a compelling dialogue with Mbengue's practice, reflecting a shared visual language that captures the nuances of African identity and history.

What do you look for when selecting a new artist to represent for your gallery?

Their own language, that's unique to them, in a world in which so much is visible, a saturated digital life, someone's own voice that comes through. I appreciate the collaborative aspect of developing it over time.