- Venue
- Frieze
- Location
- South East England
THE FRIEZE ART FAIR At the Georgian end of London town where the peace of the swept and clipped park paths with fountain after fountain, bench after bench, had for generations been overlooked by the proud white town houses, sat the huge white marquee for the fair. Inside, no queuing, except for the cloakroom, rows of galleries – box next to box, with wares spilling out into the aisles. There was so much art, as one would expect. So much to see; there were aluminium pictures with creamy gloss patterns, huge hair circles of fat plaits, thin plaits, twisted hair and stray; a wooden doll like a column with long black plaited hair and a bin liner filling some gap for an internal organ. There were shapes growing like another planet’s organism made from tights stretched and held down with stones inside it`s feet. A pinky-brown painting of troughs and peaks and a malachite green one of craters and ridges hung in separate galleries, while in another lurked some glossy black splodges oozing near edges of chromed shelves. Collections of lazily drawn pictures – either all in frames or all on variously sized coloured panels (one set had particularly handsome frames and particularly lazy drawings) and a painting of a woman ironing in pastel colours picking out the shapes within the outlines and dreamy little circles bouncing through the room. Then, in the midst of it all, a flea market, with prices ranging from a pound to hundreds. Pictures, photographs of photographers, free posters, clothes, books, mugs, junk – all laid out and chosen to look like an emporium for punters to buy something, anything – and how they would love it – for the difference from the rest of the fair. Participation! Why did they do this! To make a joke of themselves, the art market charging big money for art that doesn`t look like art – before the media done it for them. Why did all those art voyeurs turn shoppers mill so eagerly clutching their purses in the most vivacious area of the fair? I thought it was sad, while the captured goddess sat lighting the candles the people weren`t paying a fiver to light. There was a shiny yellow car too. Turning on a plate. I heard that a beautiful woman dressed in typically sexy attire had stroked and polished the car posturing she wanted sex. And why? The point of this? Incase one of us accidentally buys some artwork we couldn`t afford? So, despite these two areas that tried, like a teenager, to give the art market reflective consciousness, the Frieze art fair was a very nourishing experience and I would go there again next year.
