Frieze Projects - Frieze Art Fair

Crowd in front of Cartier Award winning project by Mika Rottenberg

Frieze Commisions:

Frieze Commissions comprised four new site-specific projects all relating to the architectural dynamic of the fair itself. Thus the invited artists Mike Nelson, Lara Almarcegui, Pablo Bronstein and Loris Gréaud explored ideas about visibility and invisibility in very different ways. On top of this Frieze Commissions also featured a daily film programme in The Artists Cinema. Here the participating artists were Manon de Boer, Miguel Calderón, Bonnie Camplin, Phil Collins, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Mike Nelson's large installation Mirror Infill is as stunning and breathtaking as it is uncanny. Apparently invisible to the visitor, the work unfolds itself as a large installation constructed behind the classic art fair gallery booths. The visitor will thus not find any signing or arrows pointing to the Nelson work but only an anonymous door in the booth construction. When the puzzled visitor opens the door she instantly enters a completely different space. A labyrinth space, that is like a silent, secret darkroom - nothing like the fair outside with its bright lit corridors and with high class galleries. Light from red light bulbs reveal that thousands of photos are hung to dry under the low ceilings – photos documenting the construction of the fair and thus the transformation from grass field to building site to luxurious art fair. The installation presents a structural and conceptual counterpoint to the visible working mechanisms of an art fair and successfully activates both the viewers senses and critical reflection on the mechanisms of an art fair.

Mike Nelson: Mirror Infill, 2006.

Mike Nelson: Mirror Infill(Entrance Door), 2006.		Mike Nelson: Mirror Infill(Entrance Door), 2006.
Mike Nelson: Mirror Infill, 2006.		Mike Nelson: Mirror Infill, 2006.
Mike Nelson: Mirror Infill, 2006.		Mike Nelson: Mirror Infill, 2006.

Lara Almarcegui presents Construction Materials of Frieze Art Fair. A structural analysis of the art fair. A large text documents the range and volume of the material components of the enourmous Frieze tent. The list highlights the scale of the event as its transitory nature.

Lara Almarcegui: Construction Materials of Frieze Art Fair, 2006.

Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk? is the title of Loris Gréaud's project thus referring to the famous unsolveable riddle from Alice in Wonderland. Having collaborated with science Gréaud has been able to create so-called nano-sculptures – sculptures so small that they are only visible to the human eye through a high-power magnifying lense. However, the super tiny sculptures a presented in a slick, dark micro museum, thus highlighting the influence the exhibition space has on the way we see and understand the displayed works and their meanings.

Loris Gréaud & DGZ Research: Why Is a Raven like a Writing Desk?, 2006.

Loris Gréaud & DGZ Research: Why is a raven like a Writing Desk?, 2006.		Loris Gréaud & DGZ Research: Why is a raven like a Writing Desk?, 2006.		Loris Gréaud & DGZ Research: Why is a raven like a Writing Desk?, 2006.

The project presented by Pablo Bronstein had a very different and more performative character. With Tour of London's Post-modern architecture Bronstein conducted a corporate style minibus tour of some of London's most lauded and most derided buildings of the 1980s and '90s, drawing attention to the formal particularities of the post-modern style prevail before the economic crash. The tour rediscovered the building and gave a backdrop to the climate that gave rise to possibility of an international art fair.

Charing Cross station by Terry Farrell was one of the buildings we passed on the tour

Frieze Commissions also included 5 films by artists Manon de Boer, Miguel Calderón, Bonnie Camplin, Phil Collins, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. All films responded on the special cinematic context and were shown several times each day of the fair in The Artists Cinema. Miguel Calderón fused his trash aesthetic with narrative film, Phil Collins recorded a laughing competition, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul played with the Thai national anthem. All excellent works. The films are now going to tour cinemas in the UK, being shown before main feature film.

Program for The Artist Cinema at Frieze Art Fair

The Cartier Award:

The Cartier Award was this year inaugurated and granted to the talented Mika Rottenberg, for her amazing video installation Chasing Waterfalls: The Rise and Fall of the Amazing Sutherland Sisters, Part 1. With video and actual objects the work wittily tells the strange story of the historic Sutherland sister who in the late 1800s became millionaires after inventing a hair serum to prevent baldness - only to loose their whole fortune again before they died. However the historic tale is only the frame for a work that is essentially a poetic but critical piece on femininity, stereotype romantic women insignia, and how the sisters became hardcore business women more than one hundred years ago using themselves and their alleged femininity in entering a masculine economy.

Mika Rottenberg: Chasing Waterfalls: The rise and Fall of the Amazing Seven Sutherland sisters, Part 1, 2006.

Mika Rottenberg: Chasing Waterfalls: The rise and Fall of the Amazing Seven Sutherland sisters, Part 1(Detail), 2006.		Mika Rottenberg: Chasing Waterfalls: The rise and Fall of the Amazing Seven Sutherland sisters, Part 1(Detail), 2006.
Mika Rottenberg: Chasing Waterfalls: The rise and Fall of the Amazing Seven Sutherland sisters, Part 1(Detail), 2006.		Mika Rottenberg: Chasing Waterfalls: The rise and Fall of the Amazing Seven Sutherland sisters, Part 1(Detail), 2006.

Collaborating Partner Institutions:

Each year Frieze Projects collaborates with two cultural organizations, who are invited to present a project for the fair. This year the choice had fallen upon Platform Garanti, Istanbul and Project Arts Centre, Dublin.

Platform Garanti in Istanbul acts as a catalyst for the dissemination, research and practice of contemporary art. Platform contains an artist archive, research and lecture spaces, the Istanbul Residency Programme, and, on street level, a gallery space committed to exhibiting contemporary art from Turkey and abroad. At the Frieze fair Platform arranged a collecting point in the publications area, where newly acquired publications was displayed and were people could donate additional artist files, art publications and other materials. Thus the collection, at the end of the fair, will be shipped to Istanbul where it will be made permanently available for public research at Platform.

Project Art Centre curator Grant Watson and Sarah Pierce (The Metropolitan Complex, Dublin) were co-curating a series of radio programmes in collaboration with Resonance104.4fm, which was broadcasted live from the Resonance radio booth at the fair. all programmes took the term communism as their starting point and included conversations, interviews and group discussions with artists, theorists, filmmakers and activists, as well as visitors attending the fair. The curatorial team also worked with the diverse possibilities of radio, so that discussions was be interspersed with related sound elements, such as music, readings and audio works by artists. A stand representing Project Arts Centre was located in the Frieze Art Fair publications area.

Platform Garanti and Projects Art Center - view

Projects Art Center: Enthusiasm!, 2006.		Platform Garanti: Collecting Point, 2006.

Resonance104.4fm:

For the third year London's art radio station Resonance104.4fm set up their radio station and broadcasted live from the fair. As part of this year’s Projects, Resonance104.4fm collaborated with Grant Watson of Projects Arts Centre on a series of programmes Resonance broadcasted interviews with artists and art professionals in and around the fair. Fair visitors were able to watch the Resonance team at work and contribute to the debate.

Resonance 104.4fm: London Art Radio, 2006.

Resonance 104.4fm: London Art Radio, 2006.		Resonance 104.4fm: London Art Radio, 2006.

Written by Ane Bülow