In pictures: our pick of London’s Minor Attractions fair
We check into Frieze week's "transgressive" art destination in Fitzrovia's Newman hotel
For art lovers looking for a more intimate (af)fair during Frieze week, the hotel-based Minor Attractions may be just the ticket (until 17 October). Tickets themselves are free, opening up the “transgressive” art fair, as it bills itself, to a wider public. Following its first three years at The Mandrake hotel, the fourth edition of the fair has booked itself into The Newman, a swanky, Art Deco-inspired hotel in London’s Fitzrovia, which opened earlier this year. From bedrooms to bathrooms, here are the works to look out for at the fair’s largest edition so far.
The French-Belgian artist Léa Porré has taken over one of The Newman’s neutrally decorated hotel rooms (above) and made it a positively pink-toned zone with her site-specific installation Fatal Feast , in collaboration with Tache gallery, which opened just across the street last year. From hot pink wall decals and a sink basin overflowing with grapes in the bathroom to wooden sculptures around the frilly, rose-coloured bed, the room definitely has an air of Rococo-like opulence. But guests shouldn’t get too comfortable, the sculpture, named for different feasting courses, may include pictures of desserts but it also featuresimages of violent weaponry.
Walking into this baggage-inspired exhibition, visitors are immediately greeted by a friendly wave, albeit a dismembered one. A gloved hand emerges from a vintage bag, gently waving back and forth. The sculpture sinks into the crisp white bedding, as if a guest had just dropped off their bag after a day out. The artist Moses Tan, is also the founder of Starch, a Singaporean artist-run non-profit space, now active in London. Tan’s practice engages with themes of queerness, politics and horror, and considers how censorship of queer people in their native Singapore can make one feel almost monstrous. The work and its pair, another dismembered hand reaching toward a martini glass, have just the right amount of creepiness to ring in Halloween season.
One of the fun things about having a fair in a boutique hotel is seeing artists explore the possibilities of exhibiting in a tiled rainfall shower. The London-born artist Savannah Harris has transformed the shower into the perfect nook for an arcade game in her exhibition with Harlesden High Street (earlier this year, for London Gallery Weekend, she transformed the London gallery into a café). Seeing fairgoers gather in the bathroom to observe the colourful claw machine and its emanating neon glow is a sight to behold, as players can try to win a work by fellow artists, such as KV Duong, for just £1.
On the bedside tables in one of the bedrooms sit two strikingly colourful paper lamps, but the vibrance and lightness of the objects may be due more to Ronald McDonald of all (fictional) people, than to the hand of the artist, the Sheffield-born Benjamin Slinger. These and other lamps seen around the fair are part of Slinger’s Empire editions, created from his vast collection of vintage McDonald’s and Burger King takeaway bags spanning three decades. Inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s delicate Akari lanterns, these Happy Meal-turned-light sources, beautiful in all their cartoonishness, make a lovely foil to the heavy hotel decor, and bring some ever-needed levity to the fair week.
Another artist who looked to the bed for inspiration is the Swedish artist Erika Trotzig, exhibiting with the Mallorcan Galeria Reus. Trotzig has completely transformed the room’s central object and stripped it of its function. Trotzig has done away with any luxury or comfort: instead of a thick mattress, there is an uneven landscape of repurposed foam. Astride these unappealing, yellow swaths of foam are pink and cream classical-like drapery made from clothes dipped in Jesmonite, with the whole installation topped by a bare, blue headboard.
Max King’s installation, with the experimental art collective Plicnik Space Initiative and supported by the fair’s new Major Futures grants, takes visitors from the hotel into a private casino. Thick curtains block out any outside light and there is an olfactory work that emits the same perfume used to entice guests at the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas. King is only artist to request the removal of all the hotel room furniture, and the shock of the Norfolk-born artist’s immersive space, equipped with slot machines and a spinning roulette wheel, is transportive.
- Minor Attractions , The Newman hotel, Newman Street, London, until 17 October
