For visitors to the Frieze Art Fair who aren’t top collectors and might not have $2.75 million lying around to buy a Jeff Koons from David Zwirner or $2.6 million for a Louise Bourgeois bronze from Hauser & Wirth, there are other ways of taking home a work from the prestigious art fair.
Over at Frieze Focus, the section dedicated to younger galleries, Russian artist Evgeny Antufiev is having his UK debut at Emalin. The gallery’s striking installation is cut off from the fair by a cardboard-and-packing-tape monster, and it’s through its mouth that you enter the booth.
Frieze guest Juliette Premmereur trying her luck at Emalin. Photo: Naomi Rea.
Inside, a mishmash of objects crafted from various materials ranging from metal to textile, ceramics, and even bone awaits. A raffle-ticket tombola offers visitors the chance to pay £20 a pop and walk away with a work of art; some 30 lucky art enthusiasts had already availed of this by the time artnet News hit the booth.
Outside the white tent, South African artist Donna Kukama is hosting a pop-up herb garden as part of the nonprofit Frieze Projects section co-commissioned with the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.
Visitors must sign up to participate in Kukama’s botanical installation, titled “The Garden of Excuses,” wherein the artist urges visitors to join in on “a performance of social exchange and empathy,” and promises a reward. The garden is filled with medicinal plants, but not the fun kind, and it is unclear whether the reward mentioned is a tangible one.
Elsewhere at the fair, and despite British PM Theresa May’s remark in last year’s Conservative party conference speech that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere,” hordes of Londoners are headed towards Lucy + Jorge Orta’s booth at P4 Gallery to become just that.
Lucy + Jorge Orta, Antarctica World Passport Delivery Village, Shanghai (2012). Photo: Justin Jin.
The British-Argentine duo are inviting Frieze visitors to abandon their national allegiances (symbolically, of course) and sign up for a World Passport from Antarctica, protected by a peace treaty in the name of international research. Need a cherry on top? The document comes free of charge.
Meanwhile, in the hotly anticipated, Alison Gingeras-curated “Sex Work” section, Richard Saltoun Gallery has presented an altar to a dildo by Austrian feminist artist Renate Bertlmann, at which Frieze guests are invited to give alms. Donors receive a small card with the San Erectus print on it and all proceeds will go to a women’s charity.
Renate Bertlmann, San Erectus “Prega per Noi” and Opferstock (Offering box) (1978–2017). Image: © the Artist. Courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery. Photo: Peter Mallet.
Finally, you can pick up one of the souvenirs from Hauser & Wirth’s fictional museum, showing a made-up Bronze Age presentation realized in collaboration with renowned Classicist Mary Beard.
View of “BRONZE AGE c. 3500 BC – AD 2017,” Hauser & Wirth at Frieze London, 2017 Courtesy the artists / estates and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Alex Delfanne.
The booth includes bronze works on loan from international museums and private collections displayed alongside random bronze artifacts bought on eBay. Who said collecting had to be tough on your wallet?