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."

Work for Manchester Art Crawl...

Since my last post I have made two pieces of work for two exhibitions. The first piece was developed straight from what I was referring to in my previous post.

Whilst working at Castlefield Gallery, we held a book launch for Text Me Up! by artist and friend of the gallery, Tracey Moberly http://www.beautiful-books.co.uk/119-text-me-up

One of the themes of the work, which I found most interesting, was archiving. Tracey, in a way, had been archiving her text messages for 10 years. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't archived things usually deemed useful or important? It was this storing and compartmentalising of hugely personal, and to be honest, often mundane, notions that dictated my work.

I had been slowly but surely, over the few months previous (since about December 2010) been printing onto a till roll, with dry transfer lettering, something personal that I had written a year previously at a particularly lonely time.

I had just written on scraps of paper that were to hand at the time, and this is quite often my way, when I feel like I need to scribble something down. I therefore inevitably have a stash of paper scraps covered with all kinds of ramblings, auto-biographical, factual, ideas or silly thoughts. I decided to archive them, as Tracey had done with her texts.
When presenting my first printed till roll (still a work in progress at this point) to a discussion group at Blankspace, I received great feedback on how the roll looked when ‘rolled up’ (how I transported it around in a small plastic bag) as opposed to completely unrolled, which would obviously be a necessity if one were to read the whole thing (unless some kind of two reel system was adopted, which did cross my mind at the time…). It was this idea of concealing something to the point of not being able to grasp the content at all, but yet still holding attention due to intrigue. I came across this theme in the 2nd year of my degree when studying (and then becoming slightly obsessed, still to this day) the paintings of Ed Rusha. I went to see his retrospective at the Hayward when it was on back in 2009, a-maz-ing. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/oct/08/ed-ruscha-hayward-retrospective#/?picture=353990981&index=0

After a while researching, and thinking about different methods of display I ended up showing 12 till rolls on metal shelving along with 4 framed pieces on another shelving unit at Manchester Art Crawl, and the in August of this year, showed the same piece at Office Party exhibition, at Rogue Studios. This is my favourite work that I have made thus far, it took me such a long time to get to that work, but I am glad that I did.

Studio and Inspiration...

Project plans have been further pushed back due to a new job, but, I finally have my very own studio!

I have ideas to take the work that I started in November a few steps further, and now the possiblilities are endless due to alovely big space to work in..

I have been thinking a lot about the materials I have used in the past and what I would like to use and experiment with in forthcoming pieces. I was hugely inspired by, yet again, seeing Anish Kapoor's work in flesh at the current exhibition at Manchester Art gallery 'Flashback'. I love the materials he uses and the way he makes fairly ordinary materials mesmerising by changing the way one would normally see their form, structure and pairings with other materials.

I can see some parallels with this and the ways I have used certain objects in my work (I am in NO WAY comparing my work to Anish Kapoor's sculptures...!) However, the way I applied text on paper, but unconventionally arranged it, and how I have placed cobblestones on the pavement to illustrate walking, but you can't actually walk on them..

This really excites me, and now that I am aware of being drawn to certain objects and materials but would never consider using them in a conventional way, I am looking forward to taking this further...

Thoughts over the last few months...

Yikes, it has been getting on for 6 months since my last post. I have been doing various activities in my few months off, but now am keen to get them written down on the blog and really start pushing myself forward in developing some new work using these thoughts...

I started to think more specifically about my life and why I'm a walker.

Walking to make a memory?

I walk to feel good about, if I miss it out of my daily routine then I feel badly about myself. It would be stupid to think that it was all about the physical aspects of the ritual. As it is not just generally about exercise, if I don't take my time to walk and think then I feel like I am loosing control. So is that what it is about? Loosing control? Possibly. Its definitely something that only I alone, can control in my life and no one can do for me, the days I walk, are the days I am most content with life, with my life. It is never something I have to do in terms of career, friendships or just general survival necessity, yet it is always at the top of the list of my priorities. If I do do it, then it is something good that I didn't have to have done but I have anyway, and therefore I am in absolute control of my physical actions despite what life throws at me, especially the problem of TIME. There is always that issue of TIME, the ticking clock, it never goes away, there is no respite from it.

This control, I think, must be to counteract some bad behaviour somewhere along the line. But when I say BAD, not immoral, just some personal things that I feel I needn't have done. But this might not necessarily be true. This is only if feel it is only an activity to balance the element of control in my behaviour. Maybe it's simple. Maybe it's so simple in that it makes me happy and I enjoy it. But that wouldn't explain the feelings before and after. It could be an addiction, an addiction to endorphins released?

I am less interested in the reasons for this however, and perhaps more interested in this idea of the before and after..... How an activity, person, object, event can change dramatically before and after an event when really it hasn't changed at all, but our minds have.

"Most of what we do is the result of automatic responses to the world around us, rather than the outcome of conscious decision making. Changing our context is a more powerful way of shaping our behaviour than trying to change our minds..." [Autonomy]

I came across this quote when researching and reading for my previous work before the summer, but I feel that it is something that really sums up almost all of my thoughts and theories that I am interested in.

Something I read somewhere opened up my thoughts on the possible dramatic change of how we think about something sometimes based on a memory....

Degree Show Pictures Continued....