Yet there are not many laughs in this big, bland tent. Confronted with so much oil and acrylic, of course it’s tempting to alight on the most grabby, instantly impactful, in short Friezesque. It’s natural to like this comedy highlight. Whichever path you take through the labyrinth of booths, you will come across every kind of painterly commodity: pictures of people, pictures of dogs, even a picture of the Muppets riding bikes through a park by Keith Mayerson.Ĭolour crash … Frieze London. And there are paintings to the left of her, paintings to the right. Her paintings boom and crash with colour yet they don’t stop zinging long enough to let you sink into them. You walk in and immediately see a spread of abstract starbursts by Jadé Fadojutimi in the prestige site occupied by Gagosian. There seem to be more canvases than in the National Gallery. But Frieze London puts that addiction to the test, an aversion therapy.

But the main reason they stand out is that a couple of pumpkins will do that in a sea of paintings. Bold, orange, funny and meaningless, they dominate a show created by Hamilton at Thomas Dane Gallery’s stand. “Pose with the pumpkins!” a photographer is saying – and many people will want to be snapped with Anthea Hamilton’s sculptures. People congregate around them as if desperately seeking that famous Frieze vibe of the insouciantly daring.

It’s coming to something when two pumpkins are the most outrageous spectacle at Frieze London. It is an unholy joy while its supposedly cutting-edge sibling has aged into a crashing bore. All the danger, outrage and obscenity you might hope to find among the up-to-the-minute contemporary galleries at Frieze London have migrated to Frieze Masters. The two Frieze art fairs that take place here in October have changed places. E verything has turned upside down in Regent’s Park.

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