Frieze London Diary: Ryan Gander's playtime, Connor Brothers' soggy sunflowers and the return of The Secret Gallerist

Child’s play: Ryan Gander and his team of young artists from three schools in the south London borough of Southwark have created six inspired bronze sculptures for Elephant Park Photo: Jon Lowe; © Ryan Gander; Courtesy Lisson Gallery
“A lot of public art is authoritarian; it’s a celebration of power and not for the public. For me, the excitement and the challenge was to trick the audience into approaching these figurative bronzes without that horrible stigma,” says Ryan Gander, who has just unveiled six distinctive bronze sculptures—his first permanent public work of art—in Elephant Park in Elephant and Castle, south London.
The works were made in collaboration with primary schoolchildren and depict three of them, decked out in an eccentric array of masks, hats and costumes. Placed directly on the grass, each of these playfully anti-monumental figures are rendered even more fantastical by being paired with a bizarre bronze object—a cartoonish campfire, a basketball/football hybrid and a strange, abstract personage —which also emerged out of discussions with Gander’s junior-co-conspirators. Here’s to the power of youthful imagination.
Sound and vision: London Community Gospel Choir offered up a programme of songs to accompany Kwesi Botchway’s paintings Courtesy Gallery 1957
Frieze week got off to a rousing start with the launch of the Ghanaian artist Kwesi Botchway’s fantastical paintings of apostles, priestesses and oracles in the dramatic interior of the French Protestant church in Soho Square. Curated by the Lagos-based Azu Nwagbogu in association with Gallery 1957, Monday’s opening was serenaded by the London Community Gospel Choir singing songs—including by Kanye West and Fireboy—selected by the artist.
Later the mood turned less sacred as the packed crowd—which included the chair of The Africa Centre, Oba Nsugbe, the British Council’s patrons chair, Ebele Okobi, and the curator Aindrea Emelife—boogied on down to Peter Adjaye’s DJing at the Mandrake Hotel after party.
Vincent van Heinz? The Connor Brothers’ take on the Just Stop Oil protest Courtesy the artists
The artist duo, the Connor Brothers, have made their own version of Vincent van Gogh’s splattered Sunflowers, which was doused in tomato soup by two activists from the Just Stop Oil campaign group in October 2022. Last month, the pair who hurled the gloopy foodstuff on the famous work at London’s National Gallery—Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland—were given jail sentences, prompting the artists to recreate the messy masterpiece.
Mike Snelle of the Connor Brothers says: “We find it outrageous and frightening that Phoebe and Anna have been imprisoned for two years for an act which is intended to highlight an issue that affects all of us.” The profit from the sale of the splattered Van Gogh reproduction, priced at £17,000, will go to Just Stop Oil; it will be shown at Maddox Gallery on Berkeley Street, London, from 21 November.
Banksy’s bulletproof vest will do more than keep you warm this winter Courtesy Sotheby’s
Feel like your wardrobe is missing a bulletproof vest by Banksy? Look no further, as one will be auctioned at the Sotheby’s London contemporary auction this evening with an eye-popping estimate of £200,000 to £300,000. One of an edition of five, Banksy adorned the garment with a Union Jack flag, “infused with a rusty red hue, perhaps suggestive of dried blood”, according to Sotheby’s.
Famously, Stormzy wore another version at Glastonbury in 2019. “Who knew moving into gents’ tailoring could be this much fun? A vest that’s capable of stopping bullets up to .45 calibre. And yet it’s not machine washable,” Banksy said on Instagram at the time.
The art world descended on Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Mayfair earlier this week for the collector Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian’s book launch. Inside the Homes of Artists: For Art’s Sake presents “the interiors of the homes of some of the world’s most prestigious artists,” says the press blurb, glimpsing into the humble abodes of artists such as Tracey Emin, Julie Mehretu and Maurizio Cattelan.
Atencio Demirdjian also takes us into the Milan apartment of the Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli, which houses some prize pieces, especially Portrait of Kim Kardashian (Ante Litteram). “I took the first curvy icon and I gave her the name of the last curvy icon,” quips Vezzoli.
RIP the days of £200 Matches Fashion gift cards being indiscriminately handed out on Frieze’s VIP Preview day—a telltale indication of a buoyant, pre-Covid market that manically consumed ultra-contemporary, ultra-wet painting like it was going out of style. In a post-pandemic, post-Matches world, a gallerist must have laser focus on day one to weed out the timewasters from those actually willing to acquire some nice bits for their walls.
Why, then, am I relentlessly hounded at fairs by individuals pitching their “revolutionary” art tech/NFT platforms? That ship has long sailed, my friend, and even when NFTs were having their moment in the sun there was something so unchic about the whole thing that I could not help but feel offended. Whether it be a radical alternative to SketchUp that is going to “fundamentally disrupt” the industry or an artwork database system that “has to be seen to be believed”, I am yet to identify what it is about my particular vibe that attracts, like moths to a flame, 20-something rich kids with trust funds who feel inclined to pitch me their tech ideas on day one of a fair.
As soon as they make a beeline for me from across the booth, hand outstretched, offering up a crumpled business card, I now pre-emptively mutter, “Oh I’m so sorry, I’ve actually run out of cards,” as I nudge the cupboard door closed, which is visibly full of my cards. Best to be discerning in these uncertain times.

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