Frieze

The day was promising. The weather was beautiful. The sun beamed down on Regent Park's autumnal state. The attractive guy at the box office was very helpful when I got flustered over booking details and a lost debit card. However, never before in my life have I ever felt so completely overwhelmed and so disillusioned by art. The sheer volume to take in in a few hours was beyond ridiculous, it ended up as some kind of game where we would wander up to each work, assign it with a 'yes' or 'no' and dependent upon that choice may or may not linger over it for the next half a minute to admire it a little bit more. I was tripping over art, my bag kept getting caught on art and all the while I was annoyed with my need to lug around a two litre bottle of water in one of my many (failed) efforts at a health kick. There was a lust for me for the cheeky collages that were littered throughout, some of the intricate drawings, pencil or biro. Video lost its poignancy in the general hubbub of the place, saturated with gallery owners and art talk that made my head hurt. A group of men dressed in white shirts and brown trousers walked around together, looking at work in a puzzled manner, hands caressing their chins and their eyebrows signifying confusion. Lingering eye contact had to be diverted with a hand over their eyes and a glance in the other direction, checking again and again if you were still looking. It was brilliant. Among the highlights for me was Roe Ethridge's scored patterns on a massive photograph, Cary Kwok's amazing biro skills, Lorna Simpson's printing onto felt, Josh Brand's photographs. On further investigation in this interview I have found some kind of affinity in his method of process, in wanting to be involved in the darkroom and the fact that he speaks of his compositional habits, almost as though there are unconscious decisions made about his work that he doesn't feel the need or the want to justify. It is what it is.

Josh Brand, Untitled, unique colour photograph, 2008

The fair seemed like an unmanageable microcosm of the contemporary artworld, but this idea evaporated slightly when leaving at dusk, to be greeted in the sculpture park by beautifully lit pieces, surrounded by greenery and away from the almost unbearable white spaces (I remember a Berlin gallery had a blue space which I particularly appreciated, especially with its massive canvas of a piece of lined paper adorned with life sized pencil doodles). There was a moving mirror playing with the light reflection that spanned the park in a circle, hitting upon whatever surface blocked its movement. There was almost definitely some giant eggs, and a little park where you could pick wooden flowers. It was a day crammed full of culture that the only way to remedy it all was to watch x factor, have a chip butty and mushy peas, a lot of coffee and a ridiculous stretch of time strewn across a sofa in various states of slobbery.