Ahead of Frieze Art Fair, we visited @rebeccahossackartgallery off Fitzroy Square. The first art gallery in Europe to exhibit Australian aboriginal paintings, the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery has built an international reputation for innovation and individuality in the three decades since it opened.

Photographer: Nic Ford @nicfordphoto

London is a tough city - if you can succeed here, you can succeed anywhere. There are so many brilliant creative people working, and I have never found (even though I travel to different cities every week of the year) a place where art and design is so original and fresh. I think it is the energy of the people. I really love British people, and the culture of constantly discussing ideas, and pushing boundaries. Also, I think the fast pace of things in this city means that people don’t have time to sit and dawdle. I have just come back from Australia where there isn’t such pressure - people take months to do something that we do in a week.

London is a tough city - if you can succeed here, you can succeed anywhere. There are so many brilliant creative people working, and I have never found (even though I travel to different cities almost every week of the year) a place where art and design is so original and fresh. I think it is the energy of the people. I really love British people, and the culture of constantly discussing ideas, and pushing boundaries. Also, I think the fast pace of things in this city means that people don’t have time to sit and dawdle. I have just come back from Australia where there isn’t such pressure - people take months to do something that we do in a week.

My gallery was born on a happy sunny day in 1988 when I was cycling along Windmill Street in Fitzrovia, and saw an empty shop with a sign ‘for rent- no premium’. If it had been raining I would not have stopped my bike; I would have peddled past. But it was such a lovely day that I slowed down. There was a man watering the pavement. He was the landlord, an old Italian man. And within ten minutes I had agreed to take on a twenty-year lease, despite having no money whatsoever and no experience of running my own business. Taking risks and jumping right in is the only way to learn.

Work hard and be nice to people - we have this neon sign in our office written in my handwriting. It really does work as a mantra and I don’t think anything is possible without hard work. For the first six years of the gallery I worked eighteen hours a day, six days a week. I had to because there was a terrible recession. You also need resilience and determination. Being nice to people is a pleasure. The gallery has tens of thousands of clients all over the world and it is like a big family - wherever I go, I am so happy to see the clients who live in that particular city; it is like coming home.

Whether they are original - I don’t like people who follow trends and fashions. I like the artists I represent to have a unique and personal way of looking at the world. I think technique is important too: I am attracted by technical quality and originality.

I’m really excited to be seeing the work of the great aboriginal painter Emily Kame Kngwarreye, which is showing at Frieze Masters. She was a genius who began painting in her 80s. We are doing a matching show of her work at the gallery.

I am reading an amazing book called Sea of Dangers, by the great Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey. It is about Captain Cook and a French merchant-captain, Jean-François de Surville, who discovered Australia at the same time as him. At one point they were within forty miles of each other outside Sydney harbour, and neither knew about the other’s existence. It is fascinating reading about the Aboriginals’ first encounters with Cook. They ignored his sailing ship even though they had never seen anything man-made of such a huge size before; nor did they want any of the trinkets he had brought with him as gifts. They were content with their own existence.

I really don’t have a ‘curated’ approach. I wake up in the morning and wonder what the day will bring. My job is so varied: sometimes I am hanging pictures or painting walls, or gardening (we have created a guerrilla garden all around the gallery), or dealing with VIP clients at an art fair. That’s why it’s great to have such brand as Aligne, with its classic pieces. I want clothes that I can do things in, that are made from quality materials, and that have a note of distinction.

A really great coat.

I probably see about ten thousand people a week when I am doing an art fair, all passing by. I love looking at what they wear: it’s very inspiring.

I have chosen to wear the Karol woollen skirt with the Kourtney jumper for a transitional look as the British weather becomes cooler.