The Good, The Booze and The Ugly - Frieze Week Round-up 2010

The Good, The Booze and The Ugly - Frieze Week Round-up 2010

18 October, 2010
by: Spoonfed Arts Team

We look back over a hectic but entertaining week on London's art scene.

Frieze Week is the busiest week in the calendar of anyone in London vaguely associated with the world of contemporary art. It's not just the monster that is Frieze Art Fair itself, but the multitude of other fairs and exhibitions which all seek to take advantage of the presence of the world's press, curators and collectors, by launching at the same time.

Here's our round-up of the week just gone.

The Good
Although we tend to find Frieze a bit like hard work, there was some good stuff – particularly work by Marcus Coates, and Grayson Perry's shockingly bright pink tights. Curator and artist Alex Chappel also developed a rather innovative game to help visitors avoid exhaustion.

Other highlights across London included the moving Threads of Feeling at the Foundling Museum, Edmund Clark's images of Guantanamo Bay over at Flowers (both of which Lauren reviewed); the slick Mirrored City at 3 Bedfordbury (Claire), Kit Craig's work at SUNDAY Art Fair and the launch of the wonderfully titled A Hedonist's Guide to Art at Hix bar in Selfridges (both Tom).

Street art impressario Steve Lazarides took over the Old Vic Tunnels under Waterloo Station to present a particular vision of Hell. Despite our initial scepticism, Sophie thought it was spectacular.

And the Pavilion of Art and Design returned to Berkeley Square for the fourth time, where Jess was impressed by Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gardjin, the deserved winners of the Moet-Hennessey prize. Their light structure entitled 'Fragile Future Concrete Chandelier' involved LEDs covered with delicate dandelion seeds, hanging from a concrete block by copper wire. Michael Hoppen Gallery also featured an impressive collection including surreal works by the fashion photographer Guy Bourdin, as well as beautiful examples of Desiree Dolron's talent, in particular 'Xterior VI'.


The Booze
As you'd expect from the art world, there were some seriously lavish parties happening across London, and we did our best to attend as many as possible: we're pretty conscientious like that. Most extravagant by far was at Boswall House on Cornwall Terrace, where the £60 million town house was filled with contemporary art from the 2010 Channel 4/Saatchi New Sensations as well as works by the likes of Schiele, Manet, Picasso and Warhol. Champagne, canapés and cocktails all flowed liberally. Tom was easily impressed.

Champagne was also the drink of choice for Jess at the new Hauser & Wirth gallery on Savile Row – where the 15,000 square foot space was dominated by Louise Bourgeois' giant spider – and Tom at Camden Arts Centre, where they unveiled a special photographic work to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their artist in residency programmes. 

Jess was less than enamoured by the wine on offer at 33 Portland Place, but apparently the exhibition, entitled 'Vanitas', more than made up for it. Which is nice to hear...


The Meh
Contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei opened his new installation at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, only for it to close a couple of days later – something to do with ceramic dust, we heard. Well, it's now re-opened but you can only view it from the balcony above so it's rather lost any charm it might have had.

Shamefully we never made it to the Museum of Everything when it launched, and perhaps our expectations were unfeasibly high this time around. The show is pretty cool – “retro circus-tastic” Tom tweeted – but it's also rather overwhelming, and in an overwhelming week that's hardly ideal. The boxing squirrels are genius though...


The Ugly
Things got ugly for the Stuckists outside Christie's as they were protesting against the sale of work by Damien Hirst, who the group see as a plagiarist. Co-Founder Charles Thomson called 999 after encountering an official outside the venerable auction house. The suited henchman was apparently “threatening”, “very intimidating”, “angry”, “unprofessional” and later became physical with the 57 year-old artist.

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Frieze Art Fair 2010 in Regent's Park, London. Photo by Linda Nylind for Frieze. 17/10/2010

Spoonfed Arts Team