Marseille’s Art-o-rama, whose 18th edition (30 August-1 September) brought together 42 galleries in the Friche Belle de Mai cultural complex, has a well-established USP.

Stands at the contemporary art fair are cheap, beginning at €3,500 for younger galleries and rising to €4,500 for more established ones. Low overhead costs, combined with Art-o-rama’s mandate that its exhibitors bring presentations specifically made for the fair, encourage dealers to show conceptually daring and relatively non-commercial work, which in turn attracts curators, collectors and critics looking to keep their fingers on the beating pulse of emerging art.

These low risks also come with low financial rewards: gallerists are usually aware (or quickly learn) that sales here are languid. The market in Marseille is “non-existent”, said the local dealer Fréderic Bonnet. “The collectors that do exist here prefer to buy in Paris, London, Berlin. They think it’s more chic.” What the fair lacks in selling power is usually made up by a reasonably strong presence of important European curators: directors of public French institutions, such as CAPC Bordeaux and CAC Ferme du Buisson, as well as the plentiful private museums dotting the country’s super-rich south coast, like Luma Arles, were present at the opening.

And then there is the simple fact of Marseille. The coastal city has, over the past decade, witnessed a dramatic revival in reputation—from squalid to sexy—and is now a popular cultural and holiday destination. Indeed, much of France’s art world decamped here this summer and availed of the fair’s 2pm opening time to spend their mornings lounging on the beach and nursing hangovers from the night before.

But these selling points were established at a different time for the industry: temperatures outside might be a balmy 32 degrees but right now the market for emerging contemporary art is not so hot. In June, numerous dealers at Liste in Basel reported tepid sales amid a wider slump. So, can Art-o-rama’s offer—and the lure of Marseille—withstand a more sober market moment?

The gloomy forecast has certainly affected the applications Art-o-rama received this edition. According to Marie Madec, a member of the fair’s selection committee and the founder of Sans titre gallery in Paris, significantly fewer galleries with presentations strong enough to be shortlisted applied this year. This forced committee members to reach out to other gallerists within their personal networks and invite them to exhibit, in order to ensure the quality of the fair did not drop.

Jerome Poggi, who has directed Art-o-rama since its first edition in 2007, confirms there were fewer strong applications this year, and noted that around half the galleries are new—meaning half chose not return from last year. “It’s not such a strong market this year. But we also ask our galleries to present works especially for the fair, so sometimes they decide it is not a good time for them to apply,” he said.

Nonetheless, it seems the Marseille sunshine may have dispelled some of the pessimism. Madec was “pleasantly surprised with a very strong performance for the opening day of Art-o-rama”, having sold four works—ceramics and a wooden sculpture—by the Chinese-born Wei Lobo. She also noted a “very promising conversation” about a large wardrobe installation work, also by Wei, for €12,000—an ambitious price point for Art-o-rama. She attributes some of this success to sharing a stand with Union Pacific gallery in London, which brought patinated brass works by Caroline Mesquita. A joint stand has meant that each galleries’ respective collectors were encouraged to engage with both programmes.

Madec added that the fair shifting its VIP opening day from Thursday to Friday this edition may have encouraged more collectors from Paris and other French cities to travel to the fair after work, compared to previous years. “I notice a lot of big watches that you don’t normally see at Art-o-rama,” she quipped.

Pleasant surprise appears however to be the exception, rather than the rule. Most galleries did not sell work by the end of the preview day, including Xxijra Hii from London and Polina Caspari from Munich. “Slower than we’d expected—and we were warned,” said Ed Leeson of 243 Luz in Margate. The gallery brought metal sculptures by Ben Gomes, five of which serve as the frames to paintings inspired by X-rays, for between £3,000 to £5,000. None had sold by the end of the preview.

Considering the wider market climate, it is unsurprising that a number of galleries pre-sold works to ensure they broke even: Spiaggia Libera, founded last year in Paris, placed four maritime-themed ceramic works by Marilou Poncin before arriving at the fair. The gallery has just opened a permanent space in Marseille—a three-storey house overlooking the sea, located in the trendy, coastal neighbourhood of Malmousque—in which it is staging a group show.

Explaining her decision to open a Marseille space, Spiaggia Libera’s director, Sascha Guedj Cohen, said: “It’s not about tapping into the local collector base—which is growing, but still not so big. Rather, it’s about engaging more fully with a very dynamic scene of artists who live here.”

Indeed, artists have been flocking to Marseille for years, drawn by cheap rents and plentiful empty space when compared to the hyper-saturated scene of Paris. And, as a number of concurrent events during Art-o-rama attested, these same factors have allowed a number of grassroots arts projects to thrive.

The shining example of this is Systema, a group exhibition now in its third year that ran during the dates of the fair. Taking over a section of the grand Palais Carli, this cutting-edge contemporary art show provides a non-commercial counterpoint to the week: virtually all participants are associated with artist-run project spaces and non-profit initiatives (although some exhibitors are represented by prominent commercial galleries). Highlights from this year’s edition included Bernadette Corporation’s sardonic, laser-cut acrylic panels installed in the august wood-panelled library. And in a dark, dank attic room, UV prints by Mira Mann, who is also currently showing in the Gwangju Biennale.

Leading Systema is a quartet of art practitioners—Lucas Jacques-Witz, Myriam Mokdes, Won Jin Choi and Ryder Morey-Weale—three of whom are behind the ambitious Marseille project spaces Giselle’s Books and Voiture 14. As their livelihoods attest, Marseille’s art scene is less informed by the market than it is “on private actors finding innovative ways to create a flexible infrastructure for art”, Jacques-Witz says.

The exhibition, which has an annual operating budget of around €100,000, is funded through a mixture of city and state funding and private foundations. Costs are reduced by the venue being given over to the organisers for free; money is also raised through an annual ticketed techno party—a social and sonic highlight of the week—thrown in the palace’s courtyard.

Determined to sustain the energy of Systema year-round, its organisers have recently collaborated with Current, an Athens-based online platform for listing art exhibitions and spaces, to create a Marseille version that spotlights the various projects taking place in the city.

According to Mokdes, Marseille’s “long history of autonomy” has influenced the spirit of its art scene, though she ponders for how long this will remain the case. “The city is certainly gentrifying,” she says. “It’s not so cheap anymore.” Meanwhile, steady funding for individual projects appears increasingly precarious. While Systema thrives, a number of spaces in town have seen their programmes halt or forced to change gear due to internal shifts in the bureaucracy of the local art ecosystem.

But at least for the time being, Marseille’s strength is that it stands apart from—rather than resembles—the French capital. Spiaggia Libera’s Guedj Cohen says that another factor for opening a gallery in a house by the ocean is that collectors from Paris come to Marseille “to slow things down” and to see art at a more relaxed pace. “It’s advantageous to have a space in which people want to spend time. They want to engage differently here.”

Similarly, exhibitors praise Art o-rama for remaining enjoyable to take part in, and for staying true to its brand. As a director at Dvir gallery puts it: “We don’t need another Art Basel or Frieze. I like Art-o-rama because it’s not trying to be something it’s not.”