What was the Frieze?

October 28, 2009

This year a fleeting look at what some are calling an unstable market, a slightly desperate business, real artists.While the Zoo Art fair has undergone considerable change, the Frieze has teetered, and regains its balance this year. Sales were so low last year that most feel galleries were said to be ‘playing safe’ in choosing this year’s art. Certainly it took me three visits to our Resonancefm booth, before I saw anything on the aisles that made me feel more than despair, or worse: numb. But perhaps numbness and despair is what we all need right now, as a warning?

Grayson Perry’s tapestry, pictured, and some other choice pieces reminded me that artists are shrewd social commentators, and magicians at delivery, as much in fine art as in the other arts practices such as performance.

People looking at art (radio, in this instance)

A talk by film-maker Agnes Varda really made the weekend, while other talks spurred on by the recession: Art and The New Deal, stir interest while others fall flat (on purpose) declaring “we are out of ideas, or we are so into ourselves and have forgotten that you are not.”

Overall there were less works that required an audience, less interventions, less fun which left the Frieze feeling like less of an event. The Zoo on the other hand featured sound pieces by Richard Strange, in a real east-end depot, as opposed to the Frieze’s odd choice for the after party: a psuedo-arts-depot recreated in the downstairs of an exclusive Mayfair restaurant, complete with fittingly aggressive bouncers and dining elite. The very reality of The Zoo and its mimicking by the Frieze, life imitating art has never been so complicated.

#Art Fari Bradley Frieze Art Fair grayson perry Zoo Art Fair

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