SomersTownLisa

London Life
2020-10-21 20:58:00 (UTC)

Frieze 2020

17th October 2020
Managed to post the Top 100 in the morning before cycling to Russell Square for the first time in a while to help the Friends group, who were planting bulbs. It wasn’t much fun, as it was difficult and a bit painful, trying to make the hole big enough using a metal tool. A girl I hadn’t met before, Claudia from Brent via Italy, was not very chatty but I caught up with Lici and had a fun chat with Ceiling, who was hurrying off to a sketching class. Leeds Paul was also there; he left early to walk to Highbury to a later task. I enjoyed watching mini-skirted girls walking through the park as I worked, some with sexy boots.

Although I worked for two hours, I always feel a bit bad leaving before the other Friends. They went for lunch afterwards, which I later found out was offered free by a nearby hotel, but I was heading for the same Highbury task as Paul. I don’t know how I ever found the route difficult before; it’s very direct to Amwell Road and the straight North to the Canonbury route, which I do know far better now.

I met two newbies, Helena and Flora, who was fairly quiet, and on the way to the meadow I chatted to a sweet, relaxed girl, Lora, starting by pointing out how long Fran takes explaining the tasks, something Lora had already been thinking. Rachel was also there, she got to know Flora, Patrick tried to get me to help him with cutting, but I wanted to chat with the girls.
I met Jack at King’s Cross, and we went to the bike shop. His bike is not ready yet, and I didn’t have the right brake blocks for them to do mine – but I had tightened the front cables. We walked through the “green way” to Regent’s Park, where we were going to look at the 2020 Frieze sculptures.

I generally like the installations but the explanations of their meanings are ridiculous. A giant sculpture of a plait of hair (by Kalliopi Lemos, made up of individual strands), which I thought resembled a tree, supposedly represented freedom. There was also a giant sandwich by Sarah Lucas, some open doors, more doors with ladies painted on them, some painted giant leaves, some dot-matrix moving signs showing prices from search results, a messy concrete statue of a man supposedly pulling a version of himself out from a plinth, a messy concrete circle made of jagged pieces, and a woman’s torso. Concrete animal heads lying on the grass were good, but best was a cleverly warped wooden structure, which looked . Worst was a messy pole. https://www.frieze.com/video/nature-touch-resistance-frieze-sculpture-exceptional-time.

We just missed the café, which shut at 17:00, but we sat in the outside seats, and watched one at a time as people marched up to the café before realising at different stages, that it was closed (others did the same with the toilets).




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