- Venue
- Ambika P3
- Location
How far is this art?
A comparison between Frieze and SUNDAY art fair.
With the two being only half a mile apart you may have thought the Frieze air would have entered P3, but this was not the case.
In its third year, SUNDAY returns to Marylebone as Frieze’s cheeky companion. Housing 20 of the finest independent galleries this art fair allows you to appreciate the art, not to become art blind with the 175 stationed in Regents Park.
With these 20 comes a character, comes a juxtaposition to the Frieze persona, comes Baz and Chaz’s Awesome Bar. It’s not as though Sunday is sticking it’s two fingers up to Sarah McCrory, far from it. It is still very much about the art, and still very much focuses on the opportunities of sale. It just simply takes a mere step away from the pretentious persona that Frieze adopts.
At the core of Frieze may be the art, but surrounding it is the VIP BMW taxi rank, the blazer and tie-d security staff, and of course the Fashion at Frieze column in Vogue. It’s almost acts as a distraction from the core, the hordes of people (majority in black) mazing their way through the alcoves, as though it’s a bazaar of art, there is no doubt that there is too much to see. And it seems in some case many of the stands have endeavoured to show as much work as they possibly can not taking into account curation, not taking into account the viewing of the work. Everything becomes lost within itself. Sauntering through there is many a piece that catches your eye but you become distracted and slightly saddened when it does not give you the impact it deserves. It’s hard to differentiate the good from the gimmicks; a florescent pink walrus from a windscreen wiped print of Chairman Mao.
SUNDAY seems as though it’s the opposite end of the spectrum – walking through a building site, the builders singings and the welding tent glowing you genuinely don’t know what to expect if you’re a first timer. There is an emerging sense of character. SUNDAY is not an outrageous fringe festival, but instead a 14,000 squared foot expanse that allows you to view the work, to take in the individual pieces for what they are, to come to a conclusive opinion.
Both very different, but both the very same.
