Frieze Foundation will curate and produce four new public art projects as part of the London 2012 Festival, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad. Situated throughout east London, the series will be known as Frieze Projects East.
The series has been programmed by Frieze Foundation curator Sarah McCrory. The projects will take place in the six east London Host Boroughs for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: Barking & Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.
Frieze Projects East has been commissioned by CREATE and The London 2012 Festival.
The artists that will take part in Frieze Projects East include: Can Altay, Sarnath Banerjee, Anthea Hamilton & Nicholas Byrne and Gary Webb.
Can Altay
Location: William Morris Gallery and selected municipal and social housing (Waltham Forest)
Can Altay works between the fields of architecture, art, design and social commentary. Often taking the form of research projects or mixed-media installations, his work explores and delineates individuals’ relationships with their urban environments.
Within the borough of Waltham Forest, Altay’s work take the form of an everyday object that will be installed in public buildings such as the YMCA, the Town Hall and social housing blocks. Taking temporary residence within the borough, Altay will use the work to activate a dialogue with local communities and explore the relationship between public art and public service; the moments of social commitment or exchange within local spaces.
Sarnath Banerjee
Location: Selected billboards throughout host boroughs and in local newspapers
Sarnath Banerjee’s bold graphic works centre on universal themes,common experience and his Indian background and culture. Anecdotal and autobiographical in nature, his stories are imbued with humour and immediacy.They follow a main protagonist (often the artist himself) as he navigates his way through everyday scenarios and stories; be it the plight of a car salesman, or the decisions of a political think tank.
Banerjee will produce a series of posters and a graphic narrative around the shared history of competitive sport. Drawing on his own experience with boxing and the story of Brazil’s first Judo champion, Banerjee’s commission will tap into a collective consciousness of sporting near misses or partial successes, the people who almost made it, resonating with both local communities and visitors to the 2012 games.
Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne
Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne’s collaboration will bring together their practices of sensate sculptural installation and figurative painting. Consisting of a series of anthropomorphic inflatable sculptures, made to their own design, the work will fill an iconic but empty east London swimming pool. Working on a large scale with a mixture of both suspended and free-standing sculptures, the project extends the duo’s interest in the theatrical and sensory experience of art.
Gary Webb
Location: Greenwich
Gary Webb’s sculptural works reference and draw on an array of disparate elements from material culture. Combining the forms and traditions of 20th-century sculpture with the synthetic materials and methods of the design industry, his works appear as idiosyncratic, nonsensical and playful propositions.
Webb’s commission for Frieze Projects East will see the construction of a permanent and interactive public sculpture that will be installed within a popular community park. Built from steamed wood, polished aluminum and cast resin, Webb’s piece will combine brightly coloured and large scale public sculpture with elements of modular playground equipment.
