A various times during this year’s Frieze London — running until 7 October at Regent’s Park — elderly women in candy-coloured security uniforms will roam the fair and interact with visitors. The unlikely security personnel are part of American artist Julia Scher’s performance, Guards, intended as an analysis of control and surveillance mechanisms through a feminist prism. As the artist says, “They occupy the space along with everyone else. It’s equal”. In this sense, the work seems like a symbolic intervention — women, older women at that, invading the historically “macho” art institution — embodying the highly publicised platforming of more women artists at this year’s fair.
This edition of Frieze London has been heralded as a feminist revamp with whole shows and sections dedicated to women artists. The extensive number of talks by women artists such as Nan Goldin, Laurie Anderson and Amy Sillman, as well as performances by contemporary names such as Laure Provoust and Camille Henrot and standout exhibits by the likes of Penny Goring all reflect a changing of the tide in terms of female representation, at least. Notably, this year’s invitational section, Social Work, spotlights women artists working in the ‘80s and ‘90s, including Mary Kelly, Nancy Spero, Faith Ringgold, and Sonia Boyce. The decision to curate Social Work is, of course, timely — it’s intended to commemorate the centenary of women’s suffrage in the UK (for women over the age 30 and who owned property). As Sally Tallent, Director of the Liverpool Biennial and one of the panelists who devised Social Work, tells SLEEK, “The selection of artists in Social Work marks this anniversary. Each of the panellists (including Frieze Editorial Director Jennifer Higgie, Whitechapel Art Gallery Director, and Iwona Blazwick) presented artists that we think have made a major contribution but who have often been overlooked by the market. The final selection are artists that have made contributions to shaping the art and culture of our time.”
Social Work has been widely welcomed by women in the art world. Director of trailblazing London gallery Arcadia Missa— representing high profile artists such as Goring and Amalia Ulman — Rózsa Farkas agrees that this year’s fair has made a conscious effort to platform more women artists — “you can see it in Social Work,” she succinctly says over email. Meanwhile, Katy Hessel of acclaimed Instagram account, @thegreatwomenartists, considers Social Work as an important move to capture the zeitgeist when “people are much more aware of the imbalance of women and men generally in the world, not just the art world”. Hessel, who is curating an exhibition during Frieze London to highlight the legacies of Lee Miller, Alice Neel and Barbara Hepworth in a contemporary context, considers that “art should always reflect culture and what’s happening in the wider world”. She expands, “With the inclusion of politically-focused artists, such as Boyce and Kelly, Frieze are opening up the conversation to the art crowd. These are the conversations that need to be happening.”
But for all of this glowing praise, how far will the feminist achievements of this year’s fair make a lasting difference on female representation in the art world? A quick glance at the listicles charting the so-called best works from this instalment still privilege the output of male artists. Josh Kline’s sculpture of a ‘journalist’ wrapped in plastic, David Shrigley’s neon statements, or Urs Fisher’s candle sculpture of curator Francesco Bonami are all far more likely to be lauded as ‘highlights’ than the pieces presented in Social Work. Indeed, while the section has been widely written about, the art works themselves have not been considered in any great detail. As is often the case with such initiatives, the art itself is swallowed up in the grand gesture — merely a footnote in the lengthy write-ups about what it’s supposed to represent as opposed to what the artists themselves are actually about.
Penny Goring at Arcadia Missa
Although Social Work is undoubtedly a positive addition to this year’s fair, the merits of the individual artists’ work need to be recognised on their own terms, not just within a group selection that is arguably engineered to overhaul the fair’s historic less-than-stellar feminist credentials. Furthermore, lest us not forget that Frieze is an art fair, designed with the sole intention to sell sell sell. Unfortunately, the cynic in me recognises that art by older women artists is having a ‘moment’ — Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin are just a handful of artists in this demographic experiencing a surge in public and market interest.
It is no coincidence that Frieze’s foregrounding of women artists comes at a time when women are quite literally taking to the streets to protest. It comes at a time when women are holding up signs to say that “they will not be silenced” and when they are taking to the stand to share their side of the story. In a turbulent climate, the feminist achievements of this year’s Frieze London must not just be for this year, but for next year, and the year after that too. Hopefully in another twenty years, we won’t have to have a section dedicated to the women artists of 2000s and 2010s because by then, I would hope, they will be consistently included in the art world — if Social Work achieves anything it must be to overthrow the tendency of the art world to overlook women artists altogether, and indeed artists of colour, and from other marginalised groups as well. As Julia Scher tells me over email, “Frieze is unfrozen”, but the thaw must continue long into the future.