‘It was arte povera with a fuck-you punk feminism.’ – Cerith Wyn Evans on Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’s The Shop (1993).
In the 30th anniversary issue of frieze, Hilton Als, Sadie Coles, Pauline Daly, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Gregor Muir and Cerith Wyn Evans remember The Shop, the artists’ short-lived project space in Bethnal Green, London, which closed on Emin’s 30th Birthday with a party titled ‘Fuckin’ Fantastic at 30 and Just About Old Enough to do Whatever She Wants’. Also, the artistic director of Serpentine Galleries, Hans Ulrich Obrist, speaks with the 2021 Frieze Artist Award recipient, Precious Okoyomon. And Korakrit Arunanondchai answers our questionnaire
Dossier: Remembering Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’s ‘The Shop’
‘It was a wild night. It was fucking fantastic.’ The Shop marked an important turning point in Emin and Lucas’s careers at a moment when London itself was on the cusp of transformation from a parochial art scene to today’s commercial powerhouse. frieze spoke with Hilton Als, Sadie Coles, Pauline Daly, Emin, Lucas, Gregor Muir and Cerith Wyn Evans for a brief history of what The Shop was and what it meant.
Interview: Precious Okoyomon and Hans Ulrich Obrist
‘Everything goes back to love.’ After a major exhibition at Performance Space New York and installation at The Shed this past spring, the 2021 winner of the Frieze Artist Award, Precious Okoyomon, speaks with Hans Ulrich Obrist about poetry, plants and planning for a precarious future.
Also featuring
frieze editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin profiles painter Alvaro Barrington, whose exhibitions at South London Gallery and Emalin, London, open later in the year. In 1,500 words, Annie Ernaux reflects on a brief love affair in Venice that prompted her to write her masterpiece, The Years (2008). Frieze co-founder Matthew Slotover discusses a project by Angus Fairhurst from the magazine’s inaugural issue and Isabel Waidner offers an alternative version of the 1990s, the decade that defined British contemporary art.
Columns: Art School
Jessica Loudis looks at Floating University Berlin, a laboratory for experiential learning in a rainwater retention basin; Ajay Kurian provides a progress report for Titus Kaphar’s Next Haven project in Conntecticut; Walter Scott offers a degree show ‘Bingo’; and Katharina Sieverding remembers her time as a student under Joseph Beuys on the occasion of his centennial. Also, Sean Burns convenes three art students – Carlos Anguera at Glasgow School of Art, Alisa Petrosova at Cooper Union, New York, and Leyla Yenirce at Fine Arts Academy Hamburg – to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on their studies.