Frieze Art Fair 2012 - Review

A tutor once said of another commercial art fair, ‘[the work] smells of the desperate end of art production’, and I am afraid that at Frieze 2012, I may have caught a whiff.

This was my first visit to Frieze Art Fair, and so I can’t compare it to previous years myself. However, the general opinion, from press, colleagues and other regular attendees, seemed to be that this year’s fair had a much more domestic feel. Generally, the work was very ‘sellable’, and I found myself walking away from Regent’s Park not knowing how I felt of my first experience of the gargantuan art fair.

There were some things that I expected to see, works by Anish Kapoor and even a David Shrigley ‘egg’ shown by White Cube. I became almost giddy when I spied a set of 9 photographs, ‘Typologie Fördertürme’ by Bernd and Hilla Becher, however, I had not expected works dating from 1966 to be one of the highlights of the fair. With time, reflection and some discussion, a few particular things became evident. The lack of curatorial influence made the work difficult to take in and enjoy. The nature of a commercial art fair means each stand is competing against the next, but even within the stands, much of the work was competing for attention too. This was a shame as when walking round the expansive marquee, there was a lot of work that faded into the background. It didn’t help that there was a distinct lack of any new media work, and moving image was not well represented either, so the majority of the work on show was a bit… samey.

The Frieze Projects were refreshing as they showcased a more contemporary participatory style of practice. Much of what I find exciting about contemporary art now is collaborative work, where often the collaborative partners are from different sectors and therefore bring something new to the process, which was encompassed perfectly in Asli Ḉavuṣoḡlu’s, ‘Murder in three Acts’, a live crime drama, rehearsed, performed and filmed during the opening hours of Frieze. Unfortunately, the more interesting Project spaces only served to heighten the air of domesticity that exuded from the commercial stands. There is no denying that Grizedale Arts’ ‘Colosseum of the Consumed’ in particular, came from a completely different moral direction to that of Lisson, for example. Adrian Searle, in his review of Frieze in the Guardian last week mentioned Grizedale’s project as a highlight.

My highlights, in addition to that fantastic archetypal Becher piece, were ‘Katsura’ by Yuki Kimura, a set of 24 photographs with cream mounts displayed with tall pot-plants, which gave the sense of a 1970’s waiting room, shown by Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (the only curated stand that I saw), ‘Artificial Rock A39’ by Zhan Wang, a large and incredibly tactile-looking silver reflective rock, at Long March Space, Beijing and installations of intriguing images on lined-up transparencies in frames jutting out at right-angles from the wall, ‘Eternity through the stars’ by Jeronimo Voss shown by Galerie Cinzia Friedlaender, Berlin. KATSURA one of 24 photographs (No. 8)

A final thought, I couldn’t help thinking when walking round Frieze, and the question still lingers; when is the obsession with neon going to end? I don’t know about you, but I’m over it. If the overall feeling of this year’s fair was ‘playing it safe’, then maybe neon encapsulated the mood perfectly.

High Class Fruit

2008

Old Time Movies

This is a photograph that I entered into a photography competition earlier this year. The competition was organised by Inter Alia Colletive based in London, to go along with a group exhibition they were showing at a gallery space in Hackney. The theme of the exhibition and related competition was Fabricate. We were told to think about the relationship between 'narrative' and 'fact', and how this can be distorted. Most of my work is inspired by history, especially what visual clues/reminders are left behind. I have worked a lot with historical images and typography in the past (I really should put more images of previous work up on here, so that it can be referenced... one day...) I loved the look of this super 8 film box from the 60's and loved thinking about when it was new, it was still referencing something old, and therefore there was sort of a double historical charm to it. Here is the statement I submitted along with the photograph... "In 'Old Time Movies' I have created a work with themes of repetition and its effect on memory. When first viewing the photograph, it is immediately obvious that it shows the duplicate image of a film case; one image within a photograph; one directly of the case photographed sitting next to the other. When I look at the photograph, I first study the object itself, the aesthetics of it, its shape, form and colour, but then look to the documentation of the same object alongside it. For me this represents recounting a memory, and how we react to identical objects being presented in two different ways in the same overall image, or even one immediately following the other or after an indeterminate amount of time. My thought when first coming into contact with the featured film and its title; 'Old Time Movies' was of time. The narrative of the situation could be easily confused as it is a relic; that is a relic in of itself. I wanted to be playful with how I set up the two stages of the photograph, and create a narrative for the finished image by obscuring and manipulating all factual elements. There are deeper meanings and inspirations from the Charlie Chaplin film itself, and its relation to the themes of the exhibition. Film and photography have conflicting reputations of fact versus narrative, in addition to films technical nature of being repetitive still images shown over variable time and speeds."