While although it is sunny, it is also bloomin’ Frieze-ing!

I work part-time in the Saatchi Gallery bookshop and more recently I’ve started to do some tech work/art-handling, helping to take down and install the exhibitions.  Through this I’ve had a days work hanging photographs and paintings in a private house and more recently I got a call asking if I was free the next day to work at the Frieze Art Fair, for a gallery from Sao Paulo.  I’ve never been to Frieze before, it’s absolutely massive & I was working within spitting distance of galleries such as White Cube, Gagosian, Marian Goodman, David Zwirner & Vilma Gold.  It was incredible to see so much artwork in one place, and to see it in the process of being cared for, carefully constructed and displayed, mostly by artists like myself who work as art technicians to support themselves, as opposed to visiting the fair while it was actually open and full of people and all about selling art as a product, which I can imagine is not so nice.

The Empire Moves Out.

The last couple of days I helped take down and pack up the recent Indian Art show at the Saatchi gallery, it gave me blisters, working in retail for so long has softened me to real proper hard work.  I can be really quite cavalier when handling my own work in the studio and it was quite different carefully handling other artists work.

The Curse of the Mona Lisa

Being an artist massively excites me, but whenever I have thoughts about being involved in the Art World/Art Market it makes me feel a bit sick. Here is Robert Hughes’ fascinating documentary on money’s involvement in Art and the commodification of Art works. (found via Mark Vallen’s Art for a change blog)  It may not be on youtube for long so check it out while you can, it’s well worth it.  If you only have a few minutes now, one of the highlights is watching collector Alberto Mugrabi squirm under the questioning of the mighty Hughes in part 11.