On Sunday 18th October and as part of Frieze Projects, Max Andrews of Latitudes participated in Fia Backström's project 'Studies in Leadership - The Review' at invitation of Filipa Oliveira and Miguel Amado. Four art critics and writers – Amado, Michele Robecchi, J. J. Charlesworth and Andrews – worked with a professional voice coach to publicly read one of their recent exhibition reviews, and together consider the implications of performance and the author's 'voice'. See images above.



Above a selection of images of some of the exhibitions and events that took place during Frieze week – 'How it is' Miroslaw Balka's enormous steel chamber for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, the Serpentine Gallery pavilion by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA pre-poetry marathon, Nils Norman and Dave Hullfish Bailey 'Surrounded by Squares' exhibition at Raven Row and of course Frieze Art Fair itself.

All images Latitudes | www.lttds.org

Frieze Art Fair, London (15–18 October 2009), has just announced part of their 2009 programme (+ info...). Galerie Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt, will be part of Frame, a newly introduced section dedicated to solo artist presentations. The gallery will present 'The Museum of Incest' by Simon Fujiwara, a version of which will soon be exhibited as part of 'Provenances' a Latitudes-curated exhibition at Umberto di Marino, Naples. + info...

'Provenances' opens Thursday 14 May, 20h. On the opening evening, the artist will present the lecture-performance 'The Museum of Incest: A Guided Tour' (starting 20.30h). For the occasion a guide of the museum has been published by Archive Books (in English with Italian translation). The guide is the first publication by Turin/Berlin-based publishing house Archive Books (formerly known as The Bookmakers Ed.).

Fujiwara (1982, London, UK. Lives in Berlin and London) has recently been artist in residence at the MAK Center for Art & Architecture, Schindler House, Los Angeles (2008–9) and participated in the exhibition 'Office of Real Time Activity', curated by graduating students of the MA Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art, London (2009). Forthcoming projects include: 'The Collectors', Danish and Nordic Pavilions, 53rd Biennale di Venezia.

Read more about Simon Fujiwara: Download a profile text from Latitudes' writing archive (pdfs in Spanish and English).

[Image: Simon Fujiwara, installation view of 'Museum of Incest: A Site Survey' (2008)]

The Cartier Award 2008 has been awarded to Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto (b. 1978). The award enables artists to realise a major project as part of Frieze Projects at the Frieze Art Fair, curated by Neville Wakefield, as well as to enjoy a 3-month residency at Gasworks, London, to produce the piece.

According to Frieze Art Fair 2008, "Prieto will present Pond, a site-specific installation of more than 100 oil drums. The mirrored pond-like effect created by water in the lids of the drums will be punctured by the presence and movement of a frog. The work will be a beautiful and poetic reflection on the current international obsession with accumulation and growth."

A version of the work is currently on view in the group show Latitudes curated with Ilaria Bonacossa at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin as part of the exhibition “Greenwashing. Environment: Perils, Promises and Perplexities” (until 18 May).

To know more about Prieto's work, read the profile that appeared in Frieze Magazine (October 2007, Issue 110) and the images of 'Grasa, Jabón y Plátano' (2006) in 'Extraordinary Rendition', the exhibition we curated in NoguerasBlanchard (March 2007).

Following is an excerpt of the artist entry in the 'Greenwashing...' catalogue:

The artist’s most visible contribution to Greenwashing is Estanque (Pond) (2007), a new sculpture in which a congregation of crude oil barrels have seemingly been transformed into an idyllic, ‘eco-friendly’ lily pond habitat with the addition of water puddles and a live frog. Though the oil barrel is not commonly part of our everyday surroundings as a physical object, it has a familiar significance as the standard unit of volume for the production and consumption of petroleum, and as such, it is often cast as a symbol of all of the ills of fossil-fuel dependency. Furthermore, the price of a barrel is a global index of macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical stability, and the fundamentals of energy supply-and-demand. [1] The environment that Prieto has created by converting the petroleum containers is no more ‘natural’ than the oil itself – which is, after all, an organic substance. Yet the sculpture inevitably suggests the prospect of eco-advertising, as if its graphic visual summary of apparent amphibian-petroleum harmony could perfectly lend itself to an audacious company marketing department in a bid to demonstrate their ‘green’ industrial principles. [2] – Max Andrews

1. According to the 2007 CIA World Factbook, in Italy the equivalent of 32.1 barrels of oil are used each day for every 1000 people – or 11.7 barrels per person per year. The figure for the US is roughly double this estimate, and for Cuba, roughly half.
2. The connection to a recent Ford Motor Company campaign is irresistible: the well-known character Kermit the Frog appears pedalling on a bicycle singing his 1970 song ‘Bein’ Green’, before he spots a Ford Escape Hybrid in a verdant wood, ‘I guess it is easy being green’, Kermit declares. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKotANcNVyo

[Image: Wilfredo Prieto 'Estanque (Pond)', 2008. Oil barrels, water, frog. Courtesy the artist and Galería NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona. Photo: Courtesy Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino]

One of our many highlights of the manic Frieze week–last week–was finally meeting up with artist Rotterdam-based Spanish artist Lara Almárcegui. She was presenting a new work for Frieze Projects that listed all the weights of materials that made up the fair's tent structure.

We have been working with Lara as one of the contributors to LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook (with pages documenting her wasteland projects), and she will also be presenting at the Arts & Ecology conference No Way Back? in London in December.