Sex and Work at Frieze 2017

Cathy Lomax digests a female-centric Frieze art fair.

Mamma Anderson, Side by Side, 2017 at David Zwirner

Many contemporary artists (whose work is not included) scream in horror and put their heads in the sand during Frieze week in London. Of course the entrance price is enough to dissuade many from visiting, but if you can cadge a ticket, Frieze really should be a must-see. Sure it can be distasteful with restaurant tables of be-suited ‘wealth management’ types (the Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Lounge actually existed at this year’s Frieze) and designer dressed, super-rich roaming the aisles sporting their plastic surgery experiments. But these are the people (or collectors as we prefer to call them) who finance art – maybe their taste is questionable, but surely its best to know who they are and in my experience there are very few artists (and even fewer galleries) who check the ethical credentials of their buyers before taking their cash.

Maria Farrar at Mother's Tankstation

     

The real reason for visiting Frieze is to look beyond the commercial and take in the work. It is the chance to see a wide range of galleries from around the world showing work made by some of your favourites in the last few months (I saw 2017 work by some of mine including Karen Kilimnik, Kaye Donachie, Mamma Anderson, Michael Borremans, Kerry James Marshall and Luc Tuymans). There will also be artists that you haven’t seen before doing amazing things and young artists flexing their muscles, such as Maria Farrar’s beautiful paintings at Mothers Tankstation and the many others in the Focus section. Art has a market and it’s fascinating to see who galleries are putting their money behind as they attempt to predict the next big thing.

Sex Work: Natalia LL at Lokal_30 Warsaw

Susan Ciancolo at Modern Art

Beyond this, in order to underplay the more unsavoury commercial aspect of things, Frieze add substance with projects and curated sections. For 2017 Alison Gingeras curated Sex Work, a section exploring feminist art and radical politics, which included work by Marilyn Minter, Dorothy Iannone, Betty Tompkins, Natalia LL and Penny Slinger. This year’s Frieze Projects included Georgina Starr’s Technicolor performance Androgenous Egg and Marc Bauer’s Drawing Identities installation.

Patricia Trieb at Kate Macgarry

I was surprised to read a comment on Facebook by a well-known artist who said that female artists were thin on the ground at Frieze and in the artworld in general and that she felt like she was a disappearing species. I can only imagine that she did not visit the fair, because if anything there seemed to be more of a female presence than in previous years. Alongside those already mentioned, some of my stand out works (incidentally from female artists) were a stunning solo presentation of Patricia Tribe’s gestural, freshly coloured paintings at Kate MacGarry, Emma Hart’s painted satellite dishes at The Sunday Painter, a well positioned large display of Anne Ryan’s cut-outs at Greengrassi, Susan Cianciolo’s intriguing display of clothes and mannequins at Modern Art and Betty Woodman’s stagey combinations of painting and ceramics at Salon 94.

All together Frieze 2017 was, I think, a pretty good year.

Cathy Lomax

Anne Ryan at Greengrassi

Betty Woodman at Salon 94

Frieze London 2017 was held in Regent's Park, London from 5-8 October.