Friezeing our knackers off!

Thurs 16^th October we woke up with blurry eyes, sore arseholes and a hotel deposit to try to blag back. That’s a lie, the hotel (more a building nestled neatly behind a closed down petrol station in the middle of the dog end of Hackney) wasn’t of deposit quality, thankfully – the donner meat we’d thrown across the wall in a flurry of post-exhibition ecstasy and pure gin-soaked tomfoolery would’ve rendered us skint.

But, alas! We had a date with the Frieze art fair 2014 to attend, we would be once again gorging ourselves and wandering starry eyed through the corridors of those that had blagged their way into being somehow more successful than us. Cheeky buggers, boring hairy fannied Europeans, political satirists and art world powerhouses unite in a spicy conceptual soup in the middle of the lucrative Regents Park.

The first thing of note, and probably THE best piece of preserved perfected sculptural, performative genius we witnessed all day was the incredible quality of the people who attended; we had never seen such a concentrated amount of beautifully placid, yet confident, HD eye-browed faces in all of our lives. Worth noting is the new London look which if you haven’t cottoned on to yet involves wearing a plain cotton t-shirt and no bra. Prominent nipples – a point in the right direction. We’ve been wearing ours like this ever since.

On to the art then (after a stop for expensive lemonade lies and sausage roll envy) – we sauntered through the haunting white walls looking to be amused, turned on or appalled (or all 3 at once).

The first work that caught our eye was a dramatic bronze sculpture of death titled ‘The Thorny Road of Food Digestion’ produced this year by the Chinese master of the absurd Chen Xiaoyun.

 

Spikey Poo

Its intimidating spikey frame appealing to our typically spikey nature, and its always to come face to face with a piece of art that is both actually physically dangerous and reminds you of poo.

We mosied on, sifting our way through what seemed like endless sculptures of things with feet and ceramics (on trend this year), desperate for some awkward interaction with the typically sour-faced gallery representatives. To no avail, they had business to do on their ipads of course (POF).

Heres a picture of Grimes doing what Grimes’s do best: pointing at an arse. This one wasn’t soft and rubbery like usual though, it was a screen with some form of endless boring pattern going on. Kudos for the arse screen revolution though, we’re hoping it might catch on and we could watch Back to the Future on a long journey off a kind ladies arse. 

Lace-mouth

Of course, this digital derriere was produced by female artist Shana Moulton (but you knew that already didn’t you?)

On to the next one, and our particular favorite from the whole fair Cathy Wiles ‘untitled’ (poor effort Cath, look at your game girl). 

This cotton headed little cutie really caught our imagination, we wanted to take it home and eat milk-bottle sweets with it and maybe one thing might lead to another. You know how it is. Take a bow Cathy, you warmed our hearts and helped create a moment of Snapchat admiration.

Gagosian can hold its massive swollen head up high for its inspired decision to bring a Gartenkinder to Frieze. This was art how it should be presented, breaking down all the cold barriers of gallery walls and building a literal playground for two giddy goats like me and him to touch and smell and wobble without the risk of another telling off. Heres Carston Hollers ‘Octopus’ being fondled by us two handsome cupcakes.

But you’d be a fool to think that we enjoyed the Gagosian room the most, we found solace in another New York galleries space: Salon 94. They attracted plenty of press with a loaned in presentation of the ‘Museum of Smile Face’ but beyond the big smiley behemoth we were seduced by the mucky sweet appeal of  a painting titled ‘Black Ice Cream’ by Katherine Bernhardt.

Everyone’s favorite cocktail ingredients submerged in a sea of black joy, its hard not to want to dance your pants off looking at a painting this wonderful.

Other than all the shit-hot art and the dredged up pretentious cold custard art we celebrated we found the whole experience tremendously inspiring and bonding and it is safe to say we will be friends for at least another year.