Frieze London ... you sucked

A hundred years ago, épater la bourgeoisie! was the battle cry of the avant-garde. Art was an act of war; the artist, a guerrilla. Modern art strove to assault the stiff and wimpish sensibilities of the European upper-middle classes. Artists set out to scandalise the establishment. Today, the establishment have VIP Frieze passes.

Last week, London’s annual art-world circus came to town. In Regent’s Park the great plastic canopy was erected, huge swathes of heavy-duty technical fabric forming a protective membrane around the labyrinth of cuboid booths. Inside this great marquee? A medley of galleries all vying to stimulate, shock and, most importantly, sell. 

In my opinion, Frieze London was crap. The worst in recent years, in fact, for the simple reason that there was very little to inspire you in the way that good art should. If you like large, colourful, abstract paintings, you were in luck.

Ironically, the most radical artwork at Frieze London this year was located in the toilet.

Yes, that’s right. Artist Gray Wielebinski installed his so-called “interventions” - editioned urinal cakes - in the loos. At a fair where the business of art is conducted with the utmost seriousness, it was a welcome reminder that sometimes the most effective artistic gesture is to take the piss, literally.

The Frieze London Artist Award was granted to Athens-based artist Theo Triantafyllidis for his sculpture Feral Metaverse (Spider) (2026). Composed of what I could only discern as various items of clothing, fake hair, prosthetics, bandages, and other detritus, the installation took the vague form of a gigantic spider wearing trainers. And if this wasn’t welcoming enough, visitors were invited to hop aboard the huge arachnid and join a multiplayer video game with fellow fairgoers. I left decidedly unconvinced. 

After a £15 salad for lunch - a boiled egg and some wilted lettuce leaves - I felt sufficiently fortified to continue my pilgrimage. 

The fair itself was organised in much the same way as it has been for years. The mega-galleries occupied their familiar positions towards the rear of the tent, while younger and ostensibly more experimental galleries were corralled into the Focus section near the entrance.

Credit where credit is due: Southern Guild, whose booth I look forward to every year, presented fantastic new works by Chidy Wayne, Manyaku Mashilo and Amine El Gotaibi. 

Pippy Houldsworth’s booth was another treat. KV Duong’s painting HCM Trail (Đông Hà) (2026) was a standout, as was Tomas Joshua Leth’s Ma’ruf, Marianne (2026).

Galerie Jocelyn Wolff’s booth of Miriam Cahn’s paintings was beautifully haunting in the way all Cahn exhibitions are. Alison Jacques Gallery displayed a solid offering of paintings by Gina Kuschke, Roy Oxlade and Flora Rebollo. 

Sasha Gordon’s Exit (2025-26), presented by David Zwirner, was a true highlight. Reminiscent of Piero della Francesca's Flagellation of Christ (1459–1460), the painting’s technical mastery, spatial ordering, and allegorical symbolism was wonderful. 

My usual safe bets let me down. Sadie Coles HQ was littered with larger-than-life kitsch objects. White Cube’s selection of Ilana Savdie works was chromatic chaos. At Harlesden High Street, I found myself struggling to discern what, exactly, I was supposed to be looking at.

Of course, Frieze London did succeed in one important respect: it reinforced London’s position as a cultural capital and demonstrated that the art market remains very much alive and kicking. Major galleries, including Pace, Gagosian and Pilar Corrias, boasted sold-out presentations, as did smaller international galleries such as Brazil’s Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel. Over at Frieze Masters, Hauser & Wirth confirmed the sale of a Jan Brueghel the Elder still life for a figure in the region of £5 million.

And so we return to the original question: what, exactly, is Frieze London for? If it is a marketplace, it seems to be doing rather well. If it is a showcase for the most interesting contemporary art being made today, this year’s edition left me less convinced. A fair can be commercially successful and artistically underwhelming; the two are not mutually exclusive.

A hundred years after épater la bourgeoisie!, the bourgeoisie are still here and don’t seem particularly shocked. Perhaps next year, the most radical thing Frieze could do is give us something worth looking at.

Shows in London worth seeing this October: 

• Robert Ryman at the Barbican (and Yuko Mohri, if that’s your thing)

• Yuyan Wang | Pilgrims at Emalin

• Maxwell Alexandre | Black painter, white figuration at Carlos/Ishikawa

• This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte at Gagosian 

• Salman Toor at the Courtauld 

• Graham Little at Alison Jacques 

• Louis Fratino at David Zwirner 

• Firenze Lai: North and True North at White Cube

• Olivia Jia: Faun at The Approach

• Rosalind Nashashibi at GRIMM