The best of Frieze London 2018

Frieze Art Fair is the biggest event of the contemporary art calendar.

Now in its 15th year, it has grown to dizzying proportions. Each October, two enormous tents take root in Regent's Park: one housing Frieze London, which unites 160 contemporary art galleries, and the other Frieze Masters – bringing together several

thousand years of art. Peacocking galleries are just the half of it, though. Each year, a programme of films, talks, projects and exhibitions unfurls around the fair. Whether you’re a buyer, a seller or merely an art-loving ‘civilian’, as the galleries call it, there’s plenty to enjoy. We pick five highlights of Frieze London 2018.

1. Penguins among trees

Frieze is not confined to the warren-like bellies of the two white tents. Each year, the fair selects a number of sculptures to be displayed out in the open air, on verges and among the trees.

Curated by Clare Lilley, the director of programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Frieze Sculpture 2018 presents 25 new and significant works by 20th-century masters and leading contemporary artists from around the world. This year, the English Gardens in Regent's Park hosts Tracey Emin, artistic duo Elmgreen & Dragset, and American Kiki Smith – but our favourite offering of all comes from 87-year-old Californian artist John Baldessari. His towering Penguin, ­lifelike and squawking in polyurethane, is a wonderfully surreal thunderclap in the greenery of the English Gardens.

This stuff is gold dust – and it’s entirely free.

Frieze Sculpture is accompanied by a free audio tour by Clare Lilley and a family trail in a new, freely downloadable app, produced in partnership with ARTimbarc on frieze.com/sculpture.

Image: John Baldessari, Penguin (2018), Marian Goodman Gallery, Frieze Sculpture 2018. Photo by Stephen White. Courtesy of Stephen White_Frieze

2. Nan Goldin speaks

Each year, the fair becomes a platform for a series of high-profile speakers. In 2018, the undisputed highlight of Frieze Talks is a lecture from American photographer Nan Goldin, whose decades-long career has accompanied her to the brink.

Her work epitomises the grit of downtown NYC in the 1970s and 1980s, when she devoutly chronicled love in the time of HIV, addiction, trauma and violence. Her most recent body of work investigates her hellish withdrawal from the opioid OxyContin. And yet, for all the pain, her work retains an inimitable lyricism; a truly remarkable artist.

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Image: Self-portrait smoking, Simon's house, Stockholm, 2013 by Nan Goldin Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery New York, Paris and London

3. Hanging on the telephone

Frieze Live is always lively – a platform for interactive installations and performances. This year, everyone is talking about Camille Henrot’s installation – the French artist has created a labyrinthine series of self-help hotlines, which guide users through prompts such as ‘press 5 if your dog manipulates you with lies, contradictions or promises’. For a mythy meditation on angst and the mechanics of disappointment, it sounds like quite a lot of fun.

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Image: Galerie Perrotin, Frieze London 2017 Photo by Mark Blower. Courtesy of Mark Blower_Frieze

4. A Cornish patch

Every year at Frieze, there’s a stand that goes the extra mile. In 2018 it’s the turn of Dickinson Gallery, which has gone 275 miles, to be precise, as it presents a recreation of Barbara Hepworth’s Cornish sculpture garden for Frieze Masters 2018. The stand will be modelled after Hepworth’s studio and garden at St Ives, using the roll and rocks of the Cornish landscape to contextualise and celebrate Hepworth’s flowing forms in an immersive environment.

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5. Shop of Shrigley

Head to the Stephen Friedman Gallery this year for a helping of David Shrigley – the much-loved British artist whose satirical works defibrillate the art world’s sense of humour with their caustic wit. 

Presented as a shopfront, the gallery will showcase a solo presentation of new and recent work by Shrigley: a new series of large-scale neons, a major digital animation, a sound installation and a new body of works on paper.

Frieze London 2018 runs from 4-7 October. frieze.com

Header image: Frieze Focus 2018 Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind_Frieze