London Art Fair, the largest Modern British and contemporary art showcase in the UK, turns 21 in 2009. With a reputation both for quality and accessibility, the Fair will bring together one hundred leading British galleries, a selection of international projects and a showcase of contemporary photography. London Art Fair aims to uphold a unique and supportive approach to collecting, and takes pride in accommodating every level of collector and presenting opportunities to buy across the spectrum of the art market.

This Tiny World is filled with people who inhabit their own tiny worlds. These worlds are the manifestation of imagination and wonder. Everyday the world plays in the same way to everyone living in it, but we each possess a filter through which it is viewed. This filter is the source of many questions and many answers. The idea of this exhibition is to translate into imagery, the different viewpoints of four individual artists; Sarah Fotheringham, Claire Scully, Jim Stoten and Hannah Waldron, in an effort to let the viewer see This Tiny World from a perspective other than their own.

Author of Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine continues to have an overwhelming effect on artists, writers and musicians who relate to his cut-up logic, non-linear lifestyle and all round 'looseness'. Burroughs began painting the file-folders almost 'by accident'. The folders were always at hand, being necessary to the profession of writing itself because of the constant need to organize papers and ideas. The author originally used the folders to mix pigments and colours before observing that they could be viewed as artworks in themselves. From 1982 onwards Burroughs spent a great deal more of his time making visual art for its own sake including a number of file-folders featuring 'automatic calligraphy' partly inspired by his friend Brion Gysin. Part of the GSK Contemporary Season.

Leading the forefront of contemporary fashion design, the twice named 'British Designer of the Year,' Hussein Chalayan, is renowned for his innovative use of materials, meticulous pattern cutting and progressive attitudes to new technology. Spanning fifteen years of experimental projects, the exhibition explores Hussein Chalayan's creative approach, his inspirations and the many themes which influence his work such as cultural identity, displacement and migration. Exhibits will include ‘Afterwords’ which explores the notion of ‘wearable, portable architecture’ in which furniture literally transforms itself into garments; ‘Airborne’ bringing the latest LED technology to fashion design with a spectacular dress consisting of Swarovski crystals and over 15,000 flickering LED lights; ‘Before Minus Now’ a dress made of materials used in aircraft construction which changes shape by remote control and ‘Readings’ a dress comprising of over 200 moving lasers presenting an extraordinary spectacle of light.

Dubbed the graphic entertainer in the 1960s and 70s, Aldridge illustrated lyric books for the Beatles, album covers for the Rolling Stones, the Who and Elton John, was Art Director for Penguin, illustrated children’s books such as the much loved The Butterfly Ball and designed adverts and identities for iconic brands such as the House of Blues and the Hard Rock Café. The exhibition is a display of complete works as well as sketches, notes, letters and other archival material as well as films; bringing to life the dramatic career of Alan Aldridge.

... from R2D2 to Leonardo DiCaprio, from Cindy Crawford to Queen Elizabeth II, from Demi Moore to Patti Smith. They are all here. However, it is the other stuff, Leibovitz’s more personal work – of her parents, of her children, of her lover, Susan Sontag – that gives the National Portrait Gallery in London’s current photographic exhibition real depth. This show, beautifully curated by Charlotta Kotik and coordinated by Susan Bloom, first opened in 2006 at the Brooklyn Museum and has since appeared in San Diego, Atlanta, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Paris and, after London, will appear in Berlin. The success of the exhibition is evident in the string of renowned galleries and museums that have taken it on, and it doesn’t take a lot to see why they have done so. Kotik’s successful blending of Leibovitz’s highly recognisable, super-glossy Vanity Fair images with her unknown and very personal works is perfectly executed. We see intimate snaps of Susan Sontag in the same series as a one of Leibovitz’s most famous celebrity shots: the pregnant Demi Moore. This could be jarring, but rather feels like it shouldn’t be any other way, a revelation rather than an obscuration. The personal works actually inform the professional works, giving them a resonance that perhaps wouldn’t otherwise be felt or recognised. Likewise, we see how the professional works have affected the personal ones. Leibovitz’s relationship with Sontag, Sontag’s death in 2004, the death of her father, her relationship with her children and her relationship with celebrity over the past thirty years, are revealed to be intrinsically linked, each making up a very important part of Leibovitz’s oeuvre and, accordingly, life. This linkage is enhanced by the arrangement of works by feeling, rather than date, subject or genre. Kotik has allowed (no doubt with the input of Leibovitz herself) the emotion conjured by a photograph to precede any sort of curatorial dogma, which often dictates how a photographic exhibit is arranged. Somehow, the pieces of the jigsaw are made to fit, with even the gigantic landscapes Leibovitz did for Conde Nast Traveller becoming personally relevant through the story Leibovitz tells of their conception. They, like all the works, only add further insight and scope to the exhibition, further depth to this very personal and profound portrait of A Photographer’s Life. Perhaps the key to the exhibition’s success is the scrapbook room in which small prints of Leibovitz’s work have been tacked to a pin-board. This room, almost completely lined with (relatively) tiny Leibovitz works, is the nucleus of the exhibition. It contains personal photographs, out-takes from epic shoots for Vanity Fair and Vogue, and variations on works in the exhibit. The near-casual nature of their display (though I’m sure it’s well thought-out) encourages the feeling that this is a very personal display; even perhaps that Leibovitz has herself chosen where each photo will be tacked. This furthers the idea – whether grounded or not – that we are here privy to something quite personal: the inner workings of one of the world’s great living photographers. All this begs the question, however; what is this exhibition about? Is it about Annie Leibovitz, the photographer, or about Annie Leibovitz, the woman? Is it Annie Leibovitz we are after, or is it her photographs? Why does it seem to work so well, having personal images alongside professional ones? Is Leibovitz’s life to be reduced to her photographs? Or are her photographs raised to the level of a life? Perhaps it is both: The photographs are her life and her life is the photographs. Whatever it is, there is something here that is often missing from exhibitions: the feeling that the Great Artist is a person, just like us. Consequently, we feel a sense of accord with this illustrious acknowledgement of Leibovitz’s work and life. Likewise a comfort that there are two things that render us all equal: love and death.

‘The photographer is the director and the executioner’, explains Fry. ‘In a society where we are all driven to be more selfish and want more, we are the people who show you visually what you are supposed to want, and how you can go about getting it’. Unfortunately, we can’t really give away anymore than that, as they’re all keeping their ideas very close to their chests, which is pretty selfish!

Gail and Dale are two middle-aged transsexuals and best friends whose carefully coordinated clothing, hair and nails reflect both a sense of escapism and their deeper need to be visible. Grannan documents their interpretation of femininity and the pleasure they derive from gender mimicry and performance. By contrast, Nicole is almost unrecognisable from one photograph to the next, changing from blond bombshell to boyish teenager, the images mirroring her ever-changing and reinvented persona. Grannan’s subjects appear like hallucinations, uncanny and yet familiar. Through this she explores the uneasy relationship between fixed photographic portraiture and shifting personal identities, at the point where fantasy meets reality.

Arranged into four sections, INSPIRATIONS, the first section of the exhibition looks at how the past has inspired countless designers. It will show historic and contemporary interpretations of hat styles such as the tricorn, bowler, baseball cap, bonnet, skull cap and many more. It will also look at common themes explored by milliners such as exoticism, modernism and the natural world. CREATION will show how hats are made and the traditions, innovations and practices at the heart of millinery. This area will be set up like a milliner’s workroom with patterns, sketches, materials and millinery blocks. THE SALON reflect the milliner’s public showcase, featuring spectacular hats that show the craft at its sartorial best. On display will be designs by Philip Treacy, Mitza Bricard for Christian Dior, Vladzio d’Attainville for Balenciaga, Claude St Cyr for Norman Hartnell, Chanel and Stephen Jones. In THE CLIENT, visitors will see hats worn by famous clients including royalty and avid collectors Dita von Teese, Gertrude Shilling, Isabella Blow and Anna Piaggi, as well as hats worn by Boy George and Madonna. There will also be hats that have appeared in films including two designed by Cecil Beaton for My Fair Lady, a Balmain hat worn by Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich’s beret.

The grandeur of Imperial Russia will be captured in this display of the dress and uniforms of Emperors and officials of the Russian court. Starting in the 1720s with the lavishly embroidered coats and elaborately patterned silk banyans from the wardrobe of Tsar Peter II, the display will span a period of almost two centuries. Garments on display will include coronation uniforms and regalia of Paul I, Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II and Alexander III.