What to make of it? Another Frieze Week thing, is it just another one? Thursday evening, just back from Cork Street and the much anticipated Ken Currie opening at Flowers amongst several other show opening things on what was billed as the busiest art night of the year. That was tonight, tonight was Thursday, early hours of Friday now, the day before esterday was Wednesday, Wednesday was five hours wadding through the big white tent in Regent’s Park on preview day, that and performances around the sculptures, not taken on Master yet, Frieze Masters is always the treat at the end of it all.

Frieze’s West End night was nowhere near as happening as it was last year, who popped the Cork Street balloon? Things felt politely flat tonight, hell, some drinks waiter came at me with a silver tray and damn well served me water! What the hell was that about? Sure it was busy, nowhere anywhere near as busy as last year, none of the swagger of last year either, none of the big statement of Cork Street in 2023, none of the buzz either, it was shutting down at 8pm! Yes there were shows opening, Ken Currie certainly didn’t disappoint, he never was going to, not quite so big a show as his last one and kind of crammed into the Cork Street home of Flowers rather than their much missed much bigger East London Kingsland Road space, more on the Ken Currie show in a moment, The Crossing is a proper painting exhibition and like we said last time back in 2022, who paints like this in this day and age? The Peter Buggenhout show at Holtermann Fine Art, just a few doors along from Ken Currie is something to see as well, lots more about that in a moment, there’s all kind of bundles to unpack there, all kinds of layers of things and all to be written in a moment. Frieze week coverage? We’re just about the throw it all out at you.. 

Hey, how about a list, just for now, while we kick it all about over here? Everyone loves a list don’t they, five things to see at Frieze London (a piece to keep you going while we whale and wail, while we wrestle with the bigger review and all the running around town during the week). Here’s some Lee Bae shots, a taster very much at the top of the list, while we get on with the bigger picture.

Lee Bae – do as always click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the small slide show (with a thanks to the girl in the green tights for givingus an idea of the size).

1: Lee Bae and that very (very) black wooden sculpture that you so want to touch, that giant wooden piece that’s actually a bronze and his pulling us into the abysses of that blackness as you walk around it again and again, his different ways of exploring the same subject that Johyun Gallery from Busan, Seoul are showing at Frieze this year. The big big sculpture, big in so many ways, that Brushstroke Sculpture (a bronze edition of three) that you just want to spend the whole day with his blurred lines somewhere between very big drawings, painting, charcoal, those panels that play some kind of support act to that sculpture and turn the whole booth into what really is a powerfully rewarding installation…     

2: Chang Ling – there’s these two gorgeous, no, not the right word, but that red is gorgeous, there’s these two really powerful paintings, definitely a pair, side by side, strong, just boldly there, in the middle of the big white wall that is Don Gallery‘s booth. Booth A04 if you need to know, if you’re going you’ll surely see them as you walk past, they do demand attention.  There’s a richness to those two paintings, a powerful set of marks that really do intrigue. The artist was, so the gallery’s website tells us, was born in 1975 in Hualien City, Taiwan, I’m bluffing here, new name to me, the gallery is from Shanghai (hey, don’t be ragging on me for not knowing the artist, I bet I know more about London’s back street artists than you do). I should apologise to the other two artists sharing the booth, I could only see those two paintings, On The Brink Of Paradise, in there…

You see, there is this half written big piece about Wednesday at Frieze with a big bag load of photos and a bite or two taken, I somehow managed to take something like a couple of thousand photos and hey the sun was shining on the sculpture outside, on Leonora Carrington‘s Dancer and I don’t have another land and the big piece with tell more of the story of Wednesday should you care, this is just some (very) early morning cherry picking after a Thursday evening in Cork Street and before I grab some sleep, before we go again on Friday morning – and then there’s all the other places that have been explored this week, the edges that have been probed, the arguments got into, okay, debates, all the cold water, the hot water, the luck warm cups of tea, the cans of gin and back to the list…    

3: Jo Messer‘s panels, are we going to call them panels? A big piece of work, several big pieces of work, an offering that demands your time, an offering from the New York artist, an offering presented by 56 Henry – that’s the gallery name, it makes you think of Hoxton’s No Parking don’t it, or that place way out in that vast building in Leytonstone where that lens based artist had that show, Photos of Other People’s Photos, that place where Bethany the Gallerina worked. Anyway, 56 Henry are presenting Jo Messer and all those layers of narratives, her blurring, is that the Last Supper in there in the layers of beautiful colour that I can’t photograph,  the line between, hang on – “The artist will present three new works; two triptychs and a polyptych. Panels in disparate colours will be strung together, each one echoing the last as the figures blur into a frenzied abstraction” – I added the u to colors there just so it reads properly, don’t come over here dropping your letters from the King’s English. I love these pieces, I love that I can’t quite see where one ends and the next one starts, that the layers needs to be searched through, that the lines are delicious, that bodies are implied, many things are implied, so much in there, nothing obvious… 

This is the thing about Frieze, whatever you or indeed I might be thinking about the whole thing (I’ll tell you what I might be thinking about the whole thing tomorrow), whatever we might be thinking, there’s always something, there’s always several things, there almost always enough art to make it worth the time and effort and yes there’s whole debates to have, I’ll do that tomorrow, right now I still have Jo Messers big pieces in my head, I have those layers, i have Peter Uka’s people, Lady May and the others, I have that blackness of Lee Bae, that Lee Bae sculpture is so powerful, his charcoal… love these Jo Messer pieces, love the layers, my photos are rubbish, they’re far more alive than any photos will have you believe they are. Do click on one ofthose six images to see the whole thing or to run the mini slide show….   

Not sure this list is in any particular order, I saw the Peter Uka paintings early in the day, they kind of set things off in a good way, always good to get the first quite whispered to yourself yes in when you see that first stand out thing….

4: Peter Uka – the stories that are hinted at in those delicious paintings, the people, their clothes, the colour, “Peter Uka (b. 1975, Nigeria; lives and works in Cologne, Germany) devises figurative paintings which draw from his childhood memories of Nigeria. With a classical training in realistic figuration” – a notion that tends to have the painter in me running a mile to get away from it, the very idea of anything realistic has me throwing paint at it, however seeing these paintings in the bright alive flesh here at Frieze is wonderfully uplifting, woderfully realistic. Peter Uka “combines various image references of time specific objects with images from his memory to convey innate and timeless human emotion” – there more than that though, maybe the sense of time and place, maybe it is that you just want to have conversations with the people? The sense of things changing, the innocence and indeed the coolness of those bell bottom trousers, I like these people, i like the stories on the wall, I see brightness, hope, I just really love the way these pieces are painted, the colour, the folds, the space, the narratives, the stylish blue chair behind Lady May and her dress. Peter Uka is presented by Mariane Ibraham, a gallery from Paris, Chicago and indeed Mexico City in a booth that was so full of life.  

– “Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to announce our participation at Frieze London 2024 presenting in booth #AA5, a solo presentation of new work by Peter Uka. Showcasing the artist’s signature nearly life-sized figurative oil paintings on canvas, drawing from his childhood memories of Nigeria, this show marks Uka’s first major presentation in London”.

I do want to put that Sonia Boyce “Untitled (Kiss)’ photograph on this list, well a digital print from 2024 of a photograph from 1995, but it is from 1995 and she is a relatively big name and yes, there were Tracey Emins dotted around and a Keith Harring and what have you and that’s really not what this list is about. Apalazzo Gallery are presenting the Sonia Boyce print

– “For the new edition, the gallery is exhibiting two digital prints of photographs: ‘Untitled (Kiss)’ (1995-2024) and ‘Mm…’ (1995-2024) by Sonia Boyce DBE RA. Starting in the 1990s, the artist began to move away from self-representation, which had characterised her earlier work, in favour of a more social and conceptual practice centred on improvisation and collaboration”.

I don’t want to put the inflatable penguins on the list, not on this list anyway, there might be a list they can go on later…

5: Nour Jaouda (b. 1997, Libya) lives and works in Cairo and London, Union Pacific are presenting her work at Frieze, the London gallery not the American railroad company, and you know I do like a leaf. I do like a layer or two of leaves, layers of dyed fabric. “As she yo-yoes between both cities, her artworks limbo sculpture and painting. Jaouda’s large-scale dyed tapestries mirror the shape of prayer mats from her immediate surroundings in Cairo, incorporating steel elements both crafted by the artist and found in her environment. In this way, her work straddles personal narrative and social history; past and present” – didn’t really see prayer mats but then prayer mats are never really on my mind and layers of leaves often are, those layers of leaves hanging on Union Pacific walls  do need to be peeled back, looked under, those pieces were a highlight…

Hey, we’ll be back with lots lots (lots) more in a moment, Carol Bove’s installation that comprises a group of nine beautifully coloured approximately ten-foot-tall abstract sculptures titled Grove I–Grove IX and such, those theatre tickets from Beiruit, the… oh there’s lots more to tell… (sw)

Those tickets and labels and…

More in a moment or two, lots lots more, meanwhile…

Cultivate presents Mixtape No.8 – an online art exhibition…

Welcome to Mixtape No.8, once again, just like last time, we’ll let the art do the walking and most of the talking first rather than clutter the top of the page with words or introductions…. an on line art exhibition for those who might not be in London or can’t afford a Frieze ticket (or aren’t on the press list, hey, I can’t be paying those prices either)