Spear’s Wealth Management has a gossip columinst, Hedgehog, who didn’t produce much gossip last night but he did look into the All Visual Arts project:

All Visual Arts is a joint project between former LA gallerist and director of ArtNet Joe La Placa and the founder of Europe’s third largest hedge fund, Mike Platt, utilising the art smarts of the former and the business smarts of the latter to amass a collection of works produced especially for it. […] What about the business side? ‘I used to direct ArtNet and I was an expert on art as an asset class. My partner Mike Platt is the third-biggest hedge fund in Europe. People mistake us for a fund – we’re absolutely not a fund. Our business model is a long-term strategy over five year to make a collection so we’re not interested in any of the methodology that a fund or a hedge fund would follow. […]

On their method of collecting: ‘The concept of the AVA collection is that unlike a lot of other collections which go around to galleries and buy things, I produce things because I love working with artists and have done so for 30 years. It’s not commissioned, because that would imply we’ve bought it – ‘produced’ I like to say. We’re like Hollywood producers: someone pitches me an idea and I say, “That’s fantastic, how much do you need?” and they say, “Fifty grand,” and I say, “Let’s go for it’.”

How has the recession affected AVA? […] ‘For us, it hasn’t really affected us. My collaboration with Mike has made us recession-proof, because the way we’ve designed All Visual Arts as a hybrid organisation, without a gallery for instance, clocking 250 grand a month overhead. We have a nice humble production office, but when we do shows, we go for it.’

Frieze Week: Wednesday (Spear’s Wealth Management)