How to survive Frieze (as an artist)

Gavin Turk
Thursday 09 October 2008 19:00 EDT
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This year, I've booked a holiday with my kids straight after Frieze week to recuperate. I get exhausted, and there is a limit to the amount of pieces, people and things you can see.

But I do quite enjoy the art fairs. Rather than sit and be hunted, I try to go and hunt. It's a social opportunity – everyone is working, but in terms of the London art calendar it is the hiatus moment. There is a White Cube party every year and last year Jay Jopling got sponsorship for the champagne. The champagne breakfast is another phenomenon of Frieze week. It's so difficult to get people's attention during normal hours that this becomes a way of getting people to go to things.

This year, I have work at Frieze on Galerie Krinzinger's stand, and with Galerie Almine Rech. I'm showing 'Burnt Out', a bronze cast of a fire, a circle of bricks with ash inside it, painted to look like fire. My New York gallery, Sean Kelly, doesn't have a booth at Frieze but they come. At Zoo, I'll have some works at Riflemaker. I've also curated a little exhibition in the Tottenham Court Road with my friend Cedric Christie, in the Laure Genillard Gallery, opening on 17 October. 'Presque Rien 2' is a sculpture and painting exhibition focusing on absence as a positive drive in art, from the late 1960s to contemporary artists like Susan Collis and Gerwald Rockenschaub.

During Frieze week, it seems the alternative to art is yet more art. Everything becomes Frieze-related, and that is one of the challenges. We have to fit in Warhol at the Hayward and Rothko at Tate Modern. There is tension this year about the financial markets and a lot of galleries are very nervous. As an artist it worries me slightly, but I'm afraid it also amuses me a little.

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