Ei Arakawa and Karl Holmqvist
pOEtry pArk will take place in Regent’s Park and incorporate various activities and performances relating to an expanded idea of poetry. A unique first-time collaboration by Ei Arakawa and Karl Holmqvist, the ‘park’ will include sculptural and print interpretations of poetry as a physical existence. pOEtry pArk will also function as a refuge from the fair, a haven to which visitors can temporarily retreat from the preoccupied atmosphere of the fair, incorporating relaxing and meditative activities and an environment influenced by Japanese-american artist Isamu Noguchi.
Spartacus Chetwynd
Chetwynd will create a new unique performance based on a live game show. Two teams, ‘The Oppressed Purée’ and ‘Women Who Refuse To Grow Old Gracefully’, will take part in a live competition. Accompanied by a chamber orchestra recreating seal music, they will perform mime and dance routines in order to compete for the glory of a ride on ‘The Cat Bus’, a character brought to life from Studio Ghibli’s anime film, Totoro My Neighbour. Continuing Chetwynd’s interest in amateur performance, handmade costume, and a number of conflating influences, ranging from Mae West to John Waters, via Doris Lessing and the Marx Brothers, the event will be a spirited contest.
Matthew Darbyshire
Darbyshire will redesign the ticket tent to simulate the design of a popular mobile phone concept store. Fully functional as the box office, it will also include a number of the functionless devices often used by the creators of such concept stores and the subversion of what we consider classic store design concepts. The project examines how an audience with varying levels of familiarity with commercial design, reacts to the displaced design conventions employed within the structure.
Shannon Ebner & Dexter Sinister
Ebner and Dexter Sinister will work in collaboration to create a reading room. Working as a live-talking room, a designated space for public reading to be seen and heard on a continual basis for the duration of the fair, readers will be solicited by invitation and from voluntary participants drawn from the general population of the fair. The readers’ voices recorded from inside the room will be broadcast in various locations both within the fair and around the world.
Gabriel Kuri
Kuri will create a number of powder-coated metal sculptures that will replace the fair’s existing outdoor ashtrays. These sculptures will require the direct interaction of the audience to complete the works. As they are used, the surface will become soiled and damaged by refuse and burns that accumulate throughout the duration of the fair. The sculptures question not only the relationship between viewer, functional object and artwork, but also their position in the transitory space between inside and out.
Shahryar Nashat
Nashat continues his dialogue with the art of others in a new video work, examining how display and reproduction affect meaning and mediation. By taking a group of selected sculptures not present at the fair, Nashat will conceive of these works as sculptural displays of proxies or stand-ins, at various locations throughout the fair, signalling the displacement and absence of the artworks. Through his use of specific film techniques such as radical framing, cropping, focal pulls and the notion of a subjective camera, he puts himself in the position of the viewer encountering the chosen artworks.
Nick Relph
Relph will invite a number of artists to design and build donation boxes for a charity or institution of their choosing. These boxes will be installed throughout the fair, encouraging the visiting public to donate as they see fit. Once the fair is over, both the box itself and the money raised will be given to the chosen charities. As a public display of physical cash and relative modesty, the project will contrast with the vast amounts of ‘invisible’ money that is exchanged at the fair, and will be an opportunity for the artists involved to consider their work in a new context.
Annika Ström
Ström’s project will consist of a specially designed map that is handed out at the fair by ten embarrassed men. The project will require the engagement of the audience in a performative element that will combine humour, shame and spectacle.
Jeffrey Vallance
Vallance will present a panel discussion in the fair auditorium. He will employ five psychic mediums to channel the spirits of famous artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo, Marcel Duchamp and Vincent van Gogh. These artists will be asked a number of questions. A moderator, a personality known in the art world, will pose questions querying the role of art in the after-world, and the dead artists’ opinions on the art market in the living world. The panel will open to audience questions at the end of the discussion.
EU Partner: Kunstverein Nürnberg
Artists Katinka Bock and Marieta Chirulescu have been commissioned to make a project about the Kunstverein Nürnberg; Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft is Germany’s oldest Kunstverein and was founded in 1792. A booth at the fair will be transformed into an exhibition by the two artists, whose work embraces not only processes of history, but also aspects of the present day.
EU Partner: Vector Association
At Frieze Art Fair, the Romanian organisation Vector will face the impossible task of performing its usual function, despite its temporary displacement from its permanent site in the city of Iasi. Vector will be represented by work of artists Matei Bejenaru, Florin Bobu and Antonia Hirsch as well as the writer Dan Lungu. Another dimension of their presence at the fair will be Vector Publication, an experimental book with contributions by artists who collaborated with Vector from 1997 – 2010. This project is supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute in London.
