The Frieze Art Fair setup camp in Regent’s Park once again this last weekend, filled with fashionistas, stockbrokers, and carefully groomed continentals clutching folders filled with art-sell figures. There was even a bit of art hanging about.

In its fourth year, Frieze seems to be establishing itself as the event for art buyers/geeks/spectators. More art-aware people than I hovered in nervous excitement as the Chapman brothers turned up to paint portraits for a mere £4500. Not sure whether Tracey Emin just stayed in bed (maybe she should!). There was the usual Shock Value banality and nonsense that procrastinartists seem to produce just to irritate uncultured spectators like me, but for the most part real interesting and varied art from galleries across the world packed cubicle after cubicle and isle after isle from block A to C to E leaving you…utterly exhausted after just a few culture laps.

Highlight of the event: discovering the hidden warren of dark-rooms in the centre of the fair, linked by long midnight-black tunnels, littered with empty film canisters, filled with thousands of photographs of the fair being set up, all bathed in an eerie dark-room-red glow. Walking through and punching back out into the bright, white, loud, crowded fair you were left with a feeling you’d just been in a weird, subversive, voyeuristic dream. nice.

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