Part Five, surely not? Shall we go on? This is mostly for my benefit and surely if the moment has passed already these things are still worth documenting? Late Monday night after the weekend before, old old news already and we are still recovering from what really felt like the 5.15 to Brighton and return that got us our of brains of the train home at 3am and crowds of people catch trains from Gatwick inthe early hours having flown home from gigs in other parts of the land, surely that can;t be right and we just left the bloke with the blue carpet sweeper and I think those Carol Bove pieces covered in Part Four are wonderful, a return to form from Gagosian in the middle of a fair that overall does feel a lot more rewarding than it did last year (and who are we to moan about people flying to gigs in Glasgow when we’re looking at art that’s been flowing in from all over the globe and flown out again just as quickly, oh the obscenity of it all).

On we go, but hey you really should start as we said at the start of Part Four that there is Part Three and if you haven’t read the previous pieces then Part One and Part Two of this Frieze London thing would be a more sensible starting point? 

We’re at Sadie Coles’ booth now, we are almost five hours into the first day of Frieze London, the so called Preview Day, we’ve almost certainly looked at and thought about too much art already and there’s no way we can afford to stop for food in here. You know what, if I hasn’t liked Canadian artist Tau Lewis’s “monumental” work so much I wouldn’t have bothered so hard in terms of trying to find a name to put to is just now. The Sadie Coles HQ website, nah, can’t be be botherd with giving you the link, has already cleared off all reference to Frieze and the Fair has only been closed for a little more than twenty-four hours, all that’s gone and Paris Paris, Paris blah blah blah – see, old news already and f**k you if you didn’t look is up at the time or know all ready, London Galleries can be so aloof nearly all the time – anyway, after a bit of searching to find out more about those excellent sculptures – “Sadie Coles HQ presents Tau Lewis’s monumental work, transforming discarded textiles into intricately crafted sculptures that honour African diasporic legacies. By upcycling materials, Lewis draws on traditions of survival, creating figurative works rich with historical and cultural resonances. These sculptures weave together past, present, and future in Black cultural production, standing as acts of healing and resistance. Acknowledging the materials’ histories, she imbues them with new energy and narrative. Her recent exhibition at the ICA Boston, Spirit Level, deepens her ongoing exploration of identity and shared histories…” and you know what, as much as those pieces are excellent, I can’t be bothered with Sadie Coles (not that she’s going to be in any kind of way bothered about me not being bothered about her and he gallery).

On to the Pace Gallery booth, Hank Willis Thomas as a piece called Noir et Rouge (2024), a mixed media piece including “soccer jerseys from International teams, La Liga and Premiere League”,(186cm×234cm) – his spelling and wording in terms of those football shirts, you don’t need an extra “e” with the Premier League, we’ll let him off in terms of that e and the disrespecting of the red shirt (who cares what he does with the others) and if the cheapskate did make this in 2024 then he’s using out of date shirts, come on, last season’s shirts are so last year, it was fun for fifteen minutes, well no, maybe a couple of minutes, but then it only takes a minute to score a goal, and goals change games. We really are flagging now? Iwonder how much it costs to be the gallery at the end of the fair? Many arms and legs (they invited us once, it was more athat a year’s rent on our ten East London space). At least Pace archive things Sadie.

We’re onto those cooking pots now, I guess they looked “nice” for a moment or two? Star-painted insides? Next… Seems we’re in the “Smoke” curated section now…

“Organised by Pablo José Ramírez (Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles), a new themed section at Frieze London 2024 will present ceramic works that explore diasporic and indigenous histories. Smoke will bring together international artists at the forefront of the medium today – whose practices mine pre-colonial traditions to use clay in expanded forms – presenting ceramics as one of the most impactful aesthetic forms in contemporary art” – so yes my dismissing of stars in the bottom pots was maybe a tad disrespectful but hey, what do you want me to do, patronise them? The Smoke area and everything politely sectioned off and put over there didn’t feel right to me. Another time in another palce maybe, it felt patronising, and well I didn’t want to be… 

Somebody from a gallery from Los Angeles gives me the hard sell on Christine Howard Sandoval, actually I really am flagging now, the LA gallerina was far more friendly than her London counterparts, Christine was part of the Smoke thing as well. “Christine Howard Sandoval is a multidisciplinary artist who questions the boundaries of representation, access, and habitation, where what is held in the land and what is held within state sponsored archives negotiate shared spaces of meaning”. Hey, I’ll go back to have another look, flagging now, wave the flag, is that another flag?

And White Cube are showing us an American Flag, yet another one, who paints American Flags in this century? Danh Vo did in 2016, a gold one on cardboard, got to love a Stars and Stripes painting – “Vo’s work sheds light on the relation between the inseparable elements that shape our sense of self, through collective history and private experience” and I once saw the Pistols down the ‘undred Club, now then, now then, hey, I’m flagging, I really like that flag and the Theaster Gates piece that White Cube are also showing. Mr Gates also has work out in the Sculpture Park that is part of Frieze, we’ll get there in a bit… Actually the Sculpture part is free and you can view it until October 27th, here’s some coverage from a few weeks back, well worth a visit if the weather is to your taste, the Leanora Carringtom piece alone is worth the effort – ORGAN PREVIEW: Frieze Sculpture Expands for 2024. The free outdoor exhibition returns to The Regent’s Park with works by Leonora Carrington, Theaster Gates, Zanele Muholi, Yoshitomo Nara and more…

And there was that big Joe Bradley painting, Together, that David Swirner Gallery had on a wall, impressive in terms of a lot more than just the size and the distinctive energy of the paint, more than just the expansive colour and the movement, but I am flagging now, it is way past 2am on Tuesday morning and I ahve forgotten what a good night’s sleep is and there is a late moring gallery apointment to talk about an American Flag I painted and this time yesterday I was still on a train home from that Brighton thing I already told you about…  

When I say flagging, I mean in terms of walking around Frieze although this review or whatever the hell it is was kind of flagging last night. Need to get it done and get on with this week, Frieze London is so last week now…

There’s a rather strong Paulina Olowska painting over there, Habitual Carriage (after Bob Mazzer) painted in oil, on canvas, from 2024, yet another painting to feel rather good about, and if there were 270 galleries from more than 43 countries and if I saw most of them then at a guess, that’s at least 3000 pieces of art at both Frieze London and Frieze Masters, (if we’re averaging about ten or eleven pieces per gallery and some galleries did show way way more than a dozen pieces), and then there was all the other art fairs last week, there was those six galleries including The Approach here in East London and Collapse over in Peckham last Saturday, there was all the art in a dozen or so on Sunday’s so called East End Day, some more on Monday and on Tuesday while Mixtape was being put together, there was those five hours in Frieze followed by the sculptures on Wednesday, there was Cork Street and that Ken Currie opening and that The excellent Peter Buggenhout show at Holtermann Fine Art (that needs to be covered in a moment) and all the others in the surrounding area and another twenty or so galleries on Thursday evening, then back to Frieze and then Frieze Masters on Friday for hours and hours (and hours), then a last look at the show at Guts Gallery here in Hackney on Saturday afternoon along with a couple of other spaces, and then an almost art free day and seaside treats with Cardiacs in Brighton on Sunday, although there there were #43Leaves pieces left and now you mention it there were four or five galleries that couldn’t be passed without a look during the day by the seaside before an early morning rush back to town, more about that later and, miraculously, I didn’t go anywhere near a gallery yesterday, I have been to a meeting at one this morning though and today, Tuesday, is still young, there is still time for more (actually I shall probably hold off for a couple of days unless something really demands I go, there are hundreds of e.mails from galleries that have landed here in the last week that remain unopened). I think we might have looked at more than 5000 pieces of art in real time and real life over the so called Frieze week…

I estimate I looked at a ridiculous five thousand or more pieces of art in real life during the insanity of Frieze week, and gawd knows how many more were looked at on line, I kind of need to write these Organ pieces just to remind myself, it really is a stupid week, a disrespectful week in so many ways. As an artist, in terms of the art, Frieze and the week is both exciting and frustrating, it is annoying, confounding, soul-destroying, maybe a tiny bit inspiring in terms of the private moments shared with the actual art or an artist or two. I wish I could un-hear some of the conversations from the week, un-read some of the things I’ve read, but then I did see Lee Bae‘s work that really comes to life when you actually see it for real and there were wonderful conversations about his art, I did stand within an inch or two of a couple of Mary Beale paintings from around 1640 and you can’t really appreciate them without seeing them in the flesh and just standing there almost in her shoes for a moment or two (and I haven’t even attempted to cover the many many wonderful things seen at Frieze Masters yet – Frieze London is the hard work, the hard miles, Frieze Masters is where the real treats were waiting, however much I may want to be living for the art of right here right now, i do love all that history at Frieze Masters, things that may never been seen again). Any yes, we do get lots of negative comment about us even covering Frieze, some real vitriolic comment – hey we were covering the art, and if you can’t get emotional standing in front of a Mary Beale portrait then what are we doing here? If you can get excited walking around a giant Lee Bae bronze or just standing looking at looking at a Peter Uka painting or the beautiful guts of those Jo Messer pieces then what is the point. I’m richer in terms of experiences and the art seen at the end of the week than I was at the start…  

Hey, Frieze London, on day one, didn’t seem quite so conservative as last year, it did still feel like it was mostly being played safe, you do wonder about how some of it is deemed good enough to be there, there is some awful art, I don’t think I saw that much that was any better than the things I see on any given week in the artist-led shows that mostly go past without that much attention here in London – that Collapse group show in Peckham last weekend offered as much reward as most of the big booths at Frieze London did this year and with those thoughts, I think we’ve got to the end of day one at Frieze London 2024. There were the red and white stripes on the Frith Street Gallery booth – “Polly Apfelbaum’s presentation at Frieze London features new wall-mounted ceramics and a woven floor-based installation” but we really are flagging now…      

There were a few more pieces of art, the frummert setting up behind his kit was the last straw, no more drum soundchecks, I’ve heard way way too many drum soundchecks, lets got see the Leonora Carrington sculpture outside, and that performance by Sophie Brain and Rachel Porterbut but that really is for Part Six, back in a bit… (sw)

Frieze London and Frieze Masters ended on Sunday October 13th 2024 (hey, we put up several pieces while the event was still on, don’t be moaning at us, we’ve said far more about the actual than most)

Do as always, click on an image to enlarge and see the whole thing or to run the slide show (more titles to be added in part six, it was a long day, it has been a long week, and we haven’t thought about covering all the amazing things, the treats at Frieze Masters…)