Every year we come to this thing that some might call a ridiculously bloated art fair, every year I accidentally listen to bits of ridiculous conversations from ridiculous people, overhear people full of their own self importance, every year I put on my Cynical Smile t-shirt and think why do I come back? And yes it is easy to mock, to snipe, to think it all beneath the likes of us, to sneer, to moan. I mean it is impossible, the place is so so big, all these endless bright white booths, hardly ideal in terms of showing your art, endless white walls of art, endless booths, endless. And what are the galleries to do? It is after all about selling and if they are buying into it all then they are surely having to play to the tasteless, to the filthy rich? And the rich, on the whole, with very few exceptions, do appear to lack taste. I mean, look at the cars they still drive. Does it feel like the galleries are playing to those tastes? You do see the quick glance at your shoes and that instant judgement made, no sale here look at his feet, head back down into the laptop, avoid eye contact. Or is it that these gallery people just share those same bad tastes? These rich gallery people with all their “oh darling I haven’t seen you since Paris, will you be in Miami this year?”

And there really are some horrendously tasteless things in here masquerading as something near art, some truly awful pieces of who knows what? Indeed we’ve rejected far (far) better when we have our dirty little back street open call hats on, what the hell is that doing there? Hey, let’s not be cynical, far far too easy to just  snipe at it all, it is rather like shooting goldfish in a diamond studded garishly backlit tank. No, let’s not snipe, let’s leave all that to the attention seeking art critics, let’s wipe that cynical smile away. We could easily just write a couple of thousands words about the bad art, the unassuming uninspiring disconnecting artlessness of so much of it, or we could just assume you know there was a lot of kind of seven out of ten pieces of art, maybe more six out ten actually and lets just get on with the cherry picking, with the best bits, cynical smiles mostly parked, there’s so much art in here, how could there not be good art? There is always something…

Thursday morning, we are going to be in here for over six hours, we are going to search, we are going to be methodical and this is going to be a long piece… 

Edges, lots of edges, the edges of paintings stood out… 

There is always something. Previous years have resulted in at least a little bit of raving and drooling over something or someone; Sterling Ruby‘s yellows that time, the glorious blackness of Lee Bae in 2024, Lauren Halsey‘s attitude last year, Deborah Roberts in 2021, there is always something…  

This year? What to make of this year? Can we say that quite a lot of it was more than reasonable, it does feel like the real proper highlights were a little thin on the ground though. Let’s search through the hundreds of photos, the scribbled notes, oh the things I do for you….

Off we go then, the walk from the tube station to the big white tent, where’s the almost obligatory Anna Laurini paste up as we walk up? Even she hasn’t bothered this year, no one has, there’s usually someone seeking a bit of cheap attention. Tasty bit of buffed graff on the floor of the tube train carriage, we can’t be talking about that sort of thing here though, oh the great unwashed. Up to the big white aircraft hanger we go, the walk up does feel a little subdued, not that morning buzz of previous years, is it just me?  London has been feeling subdued all year really, well in terms of art…

Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel first, well they are right in front of the entrance and exit, in through the out door and a gallery from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro – do like that the big dogs are at the back now, a change made last year or was it the year before? The big big names, the Gagosians and such are now at the back, you need to walk through the whole thing to get to them rather than having them hog the limelight of the entrance (did miss Stephen Friedman this year, whatever went on, just in terms of the art that gallery would show here at Frieze and in their big London space, it is a big miss, might not be fashionable to say so, really couldn’t give too hoots about that). Don’t worry, we’re not going to go through every booth, Fortes D’Aloia and Gabriel do get things off to a powerful start though. It is the intention to cherry pick:

“Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel presents a solo booth by Márcia Falcão at Frieze London 2026. The presentation advances the artist’s investigation of the body while positioning painting itself… …born and raised in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, Falcão addresses the embodied social realities of women – particularly Black women – whose lives unfold in Brazil’s urban peripheries…”

– Márcia Falcão’s paintings and the fleshiness of them, the darkness, it does all feel like we are viewing things on her terms, the humanity feel powerful, defiantly complex, an empathy with her subjects, a telling, a good start to what will be a long day and almost certainly way too much art to take everything in (although that is the aim). That one particular piece of hers…

And that good start didn’t really blossom into that much for a while, we went past the birds on the wire, we explored this and that, there’s a bold Sophie Barber painting that London’s Alison Jacques Gallery are showing, the Hastings-based painter adds a brightness, the overheard conversation in front of her painting less so, the questions a gallery person has to answer! Really? You want to know what colour the artist’s hair is before you consider buying it? I did have to fight the urge, I did have to hold my tongue…

Good to see the usually very private thing that is an artist’s sketchbook, although, only a selected under glass, on we go, there’s an untitled 2024 Amy Sillman painting that Thomas Dane Gallery are showing and that Atil Dodida piece is intriguing. Past Marcus Jefferson and Harlesden High Street Gallery, newspaper notices? Really? Haven’t we seen those a thousand times before? Coolest gallery in London according to The Face, what do we know about anything?

On to the Focus bit, an area in the Fair that, so we’re told, is about new emerging Galleries, 35 of the hottest new galleries from all over the globe (or those that can afford it, Frieze invited us to take part a dozen or so years back, the money Frieze wanted back then was eye watering, more than a year of our then Vyner Street rent for a weekend of being the what? Now now, there’s that cynical smile again…

Do like East London’s Rose Easton Gallery, this has been said around here before, I like that I don’t always get what the East London Gallery are actually doing, that they sometimes infuriate, I do like their graphics; “Rose Easton is pleased to return to Frieze London with Bikini Bottom, a solo presentation of new works by Amanda Moström…”

– The Swedish artist is rather unconventional, as unconventional as the gallery itself, you do kind of wonder what went on in the booth before it opened, those Amanda Moström undertones are intriguingly real, another touch of humanity, what’s hiding in that photo album on the floor?

There’s some kind of (almost childish) cartoon marker pen on a white board affair over there, oh and a fishtank, there’s always a couple of fishtanks. On we go…

Andrea Canepa‘s pieces in the pale punk booth of  Lima/Madrid gallery Crisis are worth lingering with, the Berlin-based arist from Peru is playing in a place somewhere that intersects art, sociology, history and anthropology, more exploration is needed, curiosity in ignited which really is is all you want at Frieze and an artist you don’t know anything about?

Not sure what those broken roller skates and the garage clutter that East Contemporary Gallery have brought all the way from Milan is about? And well…. um…. well…. not really sure I can be bothered to find out

Frieze is mostly about paintings (again) this year, hundred of paintings, (thousands?) not so much in this Focus section though, not with the establishment’s approved bunch of (realtively) new kid galleries…

There’s a lot of chains over there, if the walls weren’t so white and the lights so bright, we might think we were in a Kings Cross basement; Bronx born (1992) artist Isaiah Davis is showing via New York’s Kings Leap Gallery –  “the artist presents erotic sculptures that evoke cages, safes and battering rams” – yes they did evoke, well, I guess it depends on what you want to see? Those pieces were rather erotic, bright lights and everything…

We are still cherry picking here, we are being picky, do really (really) like the strength of those powerful Okiki Akinfe pieces that London’s Ginny on Frederick are showing, I see what all the fuss is about now I’ve got to stand in front of it all, almost certainly the highlight of the day so far, a strong visual language, a touch of something subverted, a set of questions asked by the pieces (and the artist) that demand you stay a little longer than you will eventually spend in most booths…

Arébénor Basséne‘s work is being shown by Dakar’s Selebe Yoon Gallery, at first glance it looks like indigo resist work, inviting natural textile work until you really let it pull you in that is – so easy to walk past things in here, to only let those making most noise attract you, that really isn’t how you should handle things at Frieze if you really want the rewards –  Let Arébénor Basséne‘s stars guide you in, let the topographies emerge from those surfaces, let those things gradually built from wood shavings, gum arabic, sand and natural pigments introduce themselves; “By using arabic gum, Basséne uses a material central to colonial trade’s dark past, and still one of West Africa’s natural resources. These cartographies, while almost real, oscillate between imaginary and existing places…”

That pile of tissue wrapped books is rather intriguing, not sure why that should be but it is all rather intriguing, Tom Hardwick-Allen is the artist, presented by London’s South Parade. Here’s another #43SecondFilm…

And that concludes Part One, there is more though, lots (lots) more, this is going to be long, this is going to five or six parts, this Frieze deep dive is only just starting, more in a moment (sw)

Frieze London is on until 18th October 2026 at The Regent’s Park, London

And as always, do please click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show…