Amelia’s Magazine | Frieze Art Fair 2010: Exhibition Review

anarchist book fair london
Kutlag Ataman column frieze by jen costello
‘Column’ by Kutlug Ataman (2008) Thomas Dane Gallery. Illustration by Jenny Costello.

Unlike the formidable ‘fashion pack’ who rear their waspish heads every 6 months, website like this the art crowd – a jolly army of jacquard pashminas, drugs trilby hats and black horn-rimmed glasses – tend to be a more pleasant bunch. But visiting last Sunday’s Frieze Art Fair with so many of them arriving in droves, especially families (wanting little Cuthbert and Horatio to get a good cultural grounding early on) made standing in front of a particular artwork trying to ‘get’ it fairly difficult, especially when there’s someone behind you with a camera, waiting for you to get out of the way. Swarming crowds aside, the participating galleries delivered up their usual array of weird and wonderful delights. My personal favourite was ‘Clowd and Cloun’ by New York artist Roni Horn, of Eve Presenhuber Gallery, Zurich a series of images featuring a clown’s head in rapid movement (if you’ve never gotten over the film ‘IT’ like myself, then this is for you!)

Section from 'Clowd and Cloun (Gray)'  by Roni Horne,
Section from ‘Clowd and Cloun (Gray)’ by Roni Horn (2001) Eve Presenhuber Gallery. Photo by Viola Levy.

More macabre and disturbing was Berlinde de Bruyckere’s ‘Lingam’ (2010) from the Zurich Gallery Hauser & Wirth– a grotesque ‘lump of flesh’ suspended in a dome-like structure, with two legs indicating that it might have once been a person. Other works attracting attention was Belfast artist Cathy Wilkes’ intriguing installation ‘The Sea of Galilee’ (2009) courtesy of Berlin’s Giti Nourbakhsch Gallery. Featuring a scattered collection of battered objects including a life-size female figurine and a child’s nativity scenes, the work provided an intriguing reflection on religion and physical embodiment. New York’s David Zwiner Gallery unearthed ‘Trump’ (1998) a dazzling early work by Chris Ofili which demonstrates the artist’s unique manipulation of colour and texture at its most jaw-dropping (I was brought out of my awe-stricken trance by exclamations of: “Mummy, is that ELEPHANT poo?! Get over it!)

Chris Ofili 'Trump@ Photo by Linda Nylind
‘Trump’ by Chris Ofili (1998) David Zwiner. Photo by Linda Nylind courtesy of Frieze.

And the Lehmen Maupin Gallery also in New York, presented enfant terrible Tracey Emin at her provocative best with ‘Dark Hole’ (2009) – a work which among other things, takes the traditional feminine art form of embroidery and turns it on its head (quite literally some might say!)

Tracy Emin 'Dark Hole'
‘Dark Hole’ by Tracey Emin (2009) Lehmen Maupin. Photo by Viola Levy.

Frieze Projects Curator Sarah McCrory provided an engaging and accessible diversion from the serious business of browsing the works on display (and trying to chat to tired and grumpy gallery owners!) The bemused feelings of many newcomers to the art scene were summed up by Annika Ström’s project ‘Ten Embarrassed Men’ where ten be-suited corporate types shuffled around the festival looking suitably awkward (but one of them still managed to tacitly flirt with my companion to her amusement!)

Ten Embarrased Men- Linda Nylind
Annika Ström’s‘Ten Embarrassed Men.’ Photo by Linda Nylind courtesy of Frieze

And ‘Frozen’ by Cartier award-winning Simon Fujiwara took visitors on a tour of excavation sites, mostly seen through glass in certain areas below the floor of the Frieze exhibition space. Depicting a fictional Roman settlement described as “bawdy, materialistic and gender-equal,” the project was explained as the artist’s attempt to return to art in its purist form before the advent of Christianity made it “inextricably linked to piety and morality.” I wasn’t too sure how relevant this statement was given how seemingly little influence Christianity has over art today, but the project still appealed to my inner ancient-history buff!

'frozen' Photo by Linda Nylind
Section from Simon Fujiwara’s ‘Frozen’ Installation. Photo by Polly Braden courtesy of Frieze

Outside in The Sculpture Park, the endless green fields of Regents Park were a welcome break from the slightly suffocating atmosphere inside the tent, and visitors were allowed more freedom to engage with the works on display. Artist Gavin Turk’s “Les Bikes de Bois Rond” was a big hit, allowing visitors to hop on a bike, cycle round the park and return to collect their certificate on ‘having participated in an art work.’ It’s a shame many other art exhibitions can’t take place in the open air.

les bikes du bois ronde
Gavin Turk’s ‘Les Bikes du Bois Rond’ Photo by Linda Nylind courtesy of Frieze

On the Frieze Film side, Linder’s Forgetful Green stole the show in comparison to the other more abstract films presented. Shot by Vogue photographer Tim Walker, the film was an ode to hazy drunken summer days, with its motley crew of hedonistic characters (including Linder herself) painted in garish colours, who gorge on rose petals and birthday cake, and roll around fields of flowers in debauched ecstasy – in Richard Nicoll outfits naturally! I wanted to jump in the film, don a wig and some false eyelashes and throw birthday cake around with them for eternity…

forgetful green
forgetful green
forgetful green
Stills from Forgetful Green, from CT Editions: The Protagonist

Although many are now championing the smaller and more independent art fairs, when it comes to Frieze, it’s important to look beyond the corporate trimmings, and the bustling crowds, as it still remains the best way to digest all that’s new and exciting in the art world in one (admittedly exhausting!) afternoon.

freize art fair by jen costello
‘Map of the World in Ties and Jackets’ by Jonathan Monk (2009), Lisson Gallery. Illustration by Jenny Costello.

Categories ,Annika Ström, ,Archaeology, ,art, ,Berlinde de Bruyckere, ,Birthday Cake, ,Cartier Award, ,Cathy Wilkes, ,Chris Ofili, ,Christianity, ,David Zwiner, ,Drunk, ,Eve Presenhuber, ,False Eyelashes, ,Freize, ,Frieze Art Fair, ,Giti Nourbakhsch, ,Hauser and Wirth, ,Jennifer Costello, ,Jenny Costello, ,Jonathan Monk, ,Kutlug Ataman, ,Lehmen Maupin, ,Linda Nylind, ,Linder, ,Lisson Gallery, ,Polly Braden, ,Regents Park, ,Richard Nicoll, ,Roman, ,Roni Horn, ,Rose Petals, ,Simon Fujiwara, ,Thomas Dane, ,Tim Walker, ,Tracey Emin, ,vogue, ,Wig

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Amelia’s Magazine | A Serious Woman? Late-style, Sexuality and the Female Artist

Louisa8Alina Szapocznikow, viagra “Great Bellies”, case 1968, photo: Roger Gain, © Piotr Stanis?awski and Alina Szapocznikow, “Krocz?ce usta”, 1966, photo: © Piotr Stanis?awski

Very occasionally and normally with a good dose of tongue-in-cheek irony and predatorial bad-taste, is an older woman considered as an object of sexual-desire. In the Coen brothers’ latest, ‘A Serious Man’, the ‘sexy-neighbour’ is a scary super-woman with too much make-up and too little decorum. The older woman and sex is a topic of taboo and avoidance. As Charlie Brooker recently pointed out, Susan Boyle is an average looking woman but in comparison to today’s airbrushed army, she is more than the wrong side of beautiful.

Louisa1Joel and Ethan Coen, ‘A Serious Man’, 2009, © Photograph by Wilson Webb

When Louise Bourgeois grins widely wearing a coat of monkey fur with a two foot-long latex phallus wielded under her right arm she is disarming and confrontational. Old women aren’t meant to make sexual jokes, are they? This is 1982 and the artist is in her early seventies. The photograph, taken by Robert Mapplethorpe the same year as her retrospective at MoMA, is subsequently cropped so all we see is the image of her wrinkled, smiling face. The erotic humour is therefore stripped from the image leaving the question; can erotic art and old age go hand-in-hand?

Louisa2Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois, 1982 © The Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe

‘The glint in the eye refers to the thing I’m carrying. But they cut it. They cut it because the museum was so prudish’.

Louisa6

Louise Bourgeois, Janus Fleuri, 1968, © Cheim & Reid, New York

Bourgeois suggests that the image is a joke on MoMA itself; having famously excluded females largely in it’s history of twentieth-century art, Bourgeois proudly grappling a crumbling, latex phallus pokes fun at this.

Louisa4 Installation view, ‘After Awkward Objects’, 2009, © Alina Szapocznikov

Hauser and Wirths’ latest all-female line-up of Bourgeois, Lynda Benglis and Alina Szapocznikows’ brought together three artists who address the taboo of eroticism and late-style or even death. Is this show an indication that the contemporary art world has come a long way since the Guerrilla Girlsprotests of the eighties?

Louisa3Lynda Benglis, ‘Alpha 1’, 1973-74, © Cheim & Reid, New York

Lynda Benglis’ most enduring image is of her posturing, greased, powerful and amazon-like with a giant dildo held between her legs. She is sexy yet terrifying with a perfectly formed body and ‘dyke-cut’. Originally created for Artforum in 1974, this work has had the most enduring impact and potentially effects the way we view everything she has created since. In the show her works are sensual, erotic and mirror the female/male emphasis of Bourgeois’ works. Similarly, Szapocznikow casts the female body and presents us with breasts, phalli-type objects and the idea of the female-body traumatised by the holocaust, dying early as a results of breast-cancer. Although Szapocznikow does not specifically address the idea of sexuality, she makes the viewer confront a body which is not aesthetically beautiful, desirable or even fully-finished.

Louisa7Louise Bourgeois, Sleep II, © Tate Modern

These artists demonstrate a way in which the ageing female artist depicts eroticism or the female body without really depicting it. By making parts of the body, cast, crumbling or partially-shown, they create ‘acceptable’ versions of their own sexuality, while also subtly disrupting the idea of the complete, ‘perfect’ form in modernist sculpture. It is only when we are confronted with the photo, the ‘reality’ of late-eroticism in the form of Louise Bourgeois and her crumbling phallus that this question is truly addressed. You can be old and erotic, you can even be old, ugly and erotic so long as you don’t take a photo of it.

Louisa5

Headless Torso 1968, © Alina Szapocznikow

Joel and Ethan Coen ‘s ‘A Serious Man’ was released on 20 Nov 2009 and is showing at: The Soho Curzon, Vue Islington, Notting Hill Coronet, Odeon Covent Garden, Odeon Camden Town, Cineworld Chelsea and Holloway Odeon.

Categories ,20th century art, ,Alina Szapocznikow, ,Artforum, ,Charlie Brooker, ,Cineworld Chelsea, ,Erotic art, ,eroticism, ,Guerilla girls, ,Hauser and Wirth, ,Holloway Odeon, ,Joel and Ethan Coen, ,Louise Bourgeois, ,Lynda Benglis, ,modern art, ,modernist sculpture, ,MOMA, ,Notting Hill Coronet, ,Odeon Covent Garden, ,Robert Mapplethorpe, ,Susan Boyle, ,Tate Modern, ,Tewntieth century art, ,The Curzon Soho, ,Vue Islington

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