Frieze Art Fair returns this week with a whirlwind of shows, viewings and meetings, along with myriad social events in the evening. After a few years of disruption, it is now “back with a vengeance”, according to Charlotte Appleyard, business director at the Royal Academy.
Some had been worried about the art extravaganza, now in its 20th year. 2020’s edition was forced online by Covid, and last year had fewer visitors due to travel restrictions, with consultant Bomi Odufunade noticing “a lot of people missing from America and Asia”. With a new competitor in Paris+ par Art Basel, the convolutedly named new fair making its debut next week, along with Brexit issues, the worry was: would London’s Frieze be sidelined?
Happily not, says Charlie Fellowes, founder of Edel Assanti gallery in Fitzrovia, who has had private viewings all week. “I had the director of a museum from Brussels, and clients from Asia and America,” he says. “There’s as good hustle and bustle as there was pre-pandemic… people are travelling to London in order to buy things and thus far business has been good.”
The best events
While plenty of London is alive with art this week, Frieze itself is the main draw. It opened in Regent’s Park yesterday to VIPs, and will run until Sunday. Tickets for both Frieze and Frieze Masters, which are separate, start at £48 each, and between them they have more than 280 stands from galleries from more than 40 countries, with each costing well over £500 a square foot to rent.
There are free events too. Frieze Sculpture, also in Regent’s Park, will be filled with strange shapes for the next month. And galleries across the capital are having special exhibitions to coincide with the fair. Highlights are Michael Armitage at the White Cube Bermondsey, Hauser & Wirth’s show of US painter Amy Sherald, and works by Alice Neel at the Victoria Miro gallery. Meanwhile, auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips are all having sales, hoping to capitalise on rich buyers visiting the UK.
The people
Frieze brings out famous faces, some not known primarily for their art. Pogues singer Shane MacGowan has an exhibition of his paintings at Andipa gallery in Knightsbridge. He posed with Kate Moss at the launch party on Tuesday night. “Don’t forget to bring some money. A lot of money,” he told fans in a video. Maxim, vocalist with The Prodigy, has an art show at Miart Gallery in St James’s. Actor Lily Cole signed up with Sotheby’s to film a video about their offerings. Celebrities including Rishi Sunak and Maria Sharapova attended the fair’s opening day yesterday.
Art aficionados are less interested in celebrities and more in collectors, who might make or break their year. Billionaire François Pinault, who owns Christie’s, and Bernard Arnault of LVMH are both major names. US hotelier André Balazs is also in town. UK names include White Cube founder Jay Jopling; on the first day Tate director Maria Balshaw visited, on a mission to acquire for the collection. Some surprising faces are also the subjects of works: a Lucian Freud etching of restaurateur Jeremy King will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s.
Top works
While some are worrying about paying the bills, the top end of the art market still seems flush. At Frieze itself, David Zwirner sold a painting by Kerry James Marshall to a major US museum for a cool $6 million. VIPs are looking forward to seeing Sahara Longe at Timothy Taylor gallery and Jadé Fadojutimi at Gagosian, with Nigerian Nike Davies-Okundaye at Frieze Masters. At tonight’s Sotheby’s auction, Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes is the star, while Gerhard Richter’s 192 Farben is expected to sell for over £13 million. The highlight of the Christie’s sale is David Hockney’s Early Morning, Sainte-Maxime, with an estimate of £7 million. Given the big numbers, Frieze has a reputation for only being for the rich. But Odufunade says that’s a “myth”. “Everyone assumes you’re going to go in there and it’s just Picassos and Damien Hirsts, but it’s all price ranges,” she says. Young collectors with a budget of “five or 10 grand” could start their collection at Frieze.
The parties
In the evenings, a party crowd have been out all week. Tate Modern had a Frieze bash to celebrate its new Turbine Hall exhibition, Cecilia Vicuña’s “brain forest”, on Monday night. The mood felt excitable, with more than one art expert telling me Frieze is “back”. The same night, the RA had a party for their William Kentridge show, and Björk DJ’d at AnOther Magazine’s Frieze party in Bloomsbury, promoting her new album. Fans were thrilled when she graced the dancefloor afterwards.
On Tuesday night, Chiltern Firehouse hosted a White Cube bash (and on Wednesday, one for Lisson Gallery). Hollywood actor Jared Leto was there, rubbing shoulders with Tom Hollander and James Blunt, but made it to Frieze Masters bright and early the next day.
The art
Amid the glamour, the work is still front and centre. “Art made in times of crisis often goes two ways: it can reflect the times and get darker, or become more utopian and positive,” says Appleyard, arguing both are on show this year. On the more reflective side is Emmanuel Van der Auwera’s Fire and Forget, which explores the “dehumanisation of the human gaze” in photographic plates and video. More carnivalesque is Lucy Sparrow, who has a felt ice cream van right outside the fair.
“Frieze is modern,” says Odufunade, who specialises in artists of colour. While the fair was once too Western-focused, it has now “hugely” changed, with lots of work from the global south. There’s a Barbara Chase-Riboud exhibition at the Serpentine, while Amy Sherald, famous for painting Michelle Obama, is showing at Hauser & Wirth.
What this means for London
The fair comes at an interesting time for the UK, with economic woes looming. But this might help some at Frieze, as the fall in value of the pound makes foreign money go further. “Currency fluctuations always play into the mindset of people visiting,” says Fellowes. But the art is the main draw, he adds. “We’re not currency traders. It’s inevitable at a certain price point that it has an effect, but it’s not the only factor.”
Frieze shows the capital is still at the top of the world, says Millicent Wilner, a director at Gagosian. “It really shifted the entire art calendar,” she says, and that shows no chance of changing. “London is vibrant and exciting and a place that people just flock to from all around the world”. The big art buyers will be off to Paris+ next week, but Frieze is showing no sign of dropping off their radar.
