Frieze Projects East: now open
The artists that are taking part in Frieze Projects East are: Can Altay, Sarnath Banerjee, Anthea Hamilton & Nicholas Byrne, Gary Webb, and Klaus Weber, as well as Ruth Ewan, the recipient of the CREATE art award. The series has been programmed by Frieze Foundation curator Sarah McCrory.
Curated and produced by Frieze Foundation, Frieze Projects East is a series of six new public art projects that form part of the London 2012 Festival, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad. Frieze Projects East is Frieze Foundation’s first programme in public spaces.
The projects are taking place in the six east London Host Boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: Barking & Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, and Waltham Forest and seek to engage both local audiences and visitors to the area.
Frieze Projects East has been commissioned by CREATE and The London 2012 Festival as part of their commitment to bring artists to east London in 2012. The series receives significant funding support from the National Lottery through the Olympic Lottery Distributor and Arts Council England.
The London 2012 Festival is a 12-week nationwide celebration that will run until 9 September. The CREATE 2012 summer programme runs until the end of August and features new commissions and artistic collaborations in numerous venues across east London.
More information on Frieze Projects East including location details and times is available at www.friezeprojectseast.org.
Project details
Can Altay: Distributed
Location: William Morris Gallery and selected municipal and social housing (Waltham Forest), E17.
Altay’s artwork can be found across key buildings in Waltham Forest. Over twenty large, mirror-ball like sculptures have been placed on doors. The works can be touched, used, and handled by the local communities that live and work in Waltham Forest. Accompanying the artwork, a series of discursive pamphlets will be published and distributed. Altay’s temporary residence at the William Morris Gallery during August will consist of workshops and talks discussing and recording reactions to the artwork.
Sarnath Banerjee: Gallery of Losers, (Non-performers, almost-winners, under- achievers,
almost-made-its)
Location: Selected billboards throughout host boroughs and in local newspapers.
Banerjee’s graphic illustrations will be presented across posters, billboards, local newspapers, and hoardings throughout the Olympic boroughs. Banerjee’s humorous graphic narratives reference and draw on the shared history of competitive sport, from the personal to the universal, and the local to the international. The stories depict Banerjee’s own failed forays into amateur sports, alongside better-known partial successes in Olympic history.
Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne: Love
Location: Poplar Baths (Tower Hamlets), E14.
Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne are inhabiting Poplar Baths with large brightly-coloured suspended and free-standing inflatable sculptures. Referencing the famous LOVE sculpture by American artist Robert Indiana, Byrne and Hamilton’s installation draws on the visual languages of art deco—inspired by the period in which the building was re-opened as a vibrant bathhouse, music hall and theatre. The inflatables incorporate influences from advertising, popular culture, psychedelia, and an underlying cheeky sexuality. The project will allow visitors to access the spectacular art deco interior of Poplar Baths which first opened in 1852. Rebuilt in the 1930s as a huge sport, health, and leisure complex; the baths has been closed to the public since the early 1980s.
Gary Webb: Squeaky Clean
Location: Charlton Park (Greenwich), SE7.
Webb’s commission sees the construction of a permanent and interactive public sculpture installed within a popular community park. Built from steamed wood, polished aluminum and cast resin, the work combines brightly coloured and large-scale public sculpture with elements of modular playground equipment. Webb’s sculptural exploration into material and form is available for children to clamber on as a living artwork.
Klaus Weber: Sandfountain
Location: 5 Sugar House Lane, (Newham) E15.
Weber presents a distinctive take on a traditional way to artificially ornament a site. Sandfountain takes the form of a traditional three-tiered fountain but is engineered to propel sand rather than water. The artist has made several previous fountain projects. Like them, Sandfountain is part visual-pun, part spectacle, both confounding our material expectations and emphasising its own artifice.
Klaus Weber’s work will be on view 1–26 August 2012.
Ruth Ewan: The CREATE Art Award, Liberties of the Savoy
Ewan has been working with a group of creative mentors and more than 200 young people from across east London to create The Liberties of the Savoy, drawing inspiration from events that took place in 14th-century London. On 17 July, young people from across the six Olympic host boroughs travelled to The Savoy’s Lancaster Ballroom to create a unique event inspired by the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Throughout the planning and execution of the event, the young participants have been made responsible for every aspect of the project including the menu, music, performance, design, and transport.
Produced with additional support from The Savoy.
The CREATE Art Award is the largest participatory art award in the UK and is sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
