Young at art: inside Frieze London's Focus section

"In a fair awash with painting, Focus-the section dedicated to galleries up to 12 years old-is an invigorating burst of variety and imagination. The six stands featured here include works made in materials from glass and tar to pastel, etching, found mannequins, calico and plastic, in which painting occasionally insinuates itself. The subject matter, too, is diverse, but if there is an insistent theme it is-not unexpectedly for predominantly younger artists-one of climate breakdown."

"A two-part installation focusing on histories of labour, at its heart is a cluster of mannequins-once in use at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu in Hampshire-bound together with rope. Formerly employed in dioramas to illustrate industrial history, these working people are now severed from their original purpose-one of numerous metaphors in Arden's work. And they are quite literally severed: many have limbs or even a head missing."

"Luís Lázaro Matos transforms a real story, of a beluga whale stranded in the River Thames in 2018, into a contemporary myth. He transports "Benny" to warmer climes, a sort of queer paradise of anthropomorphised Cetacean revellers, living and loving amid azure oceans, verdant headlands and Modernist villas. Realised in pastel and pinned with glistening shell-like forms to walls covered in murals of oceanic spume and spray, Matos's drawings nod to the curvaceous sensuality of Jean Cocteau's murals and to the fluid overlapping fo"

In a fair dominated by painting, the Focus section showcases galleries up to twelve years old offering diverse, experimental works. Six stands present pieces made from glass, tar, pastel, etching, found mannequins, calico and plastic, with painting appearing sporadically. A recurring theme among younger artists is climate breakdown. Alex Margo Arden presents a two-part installation examining labour histories through clustered mannequins once used at the National Motor Museum, many mutilated, and a painting reproducing a Daily Departmental Accident Record that links injury, time lost and spectacle. Luís Lázaro Matos retells the 2018 Thames beluga story as a pastel-filled queer mythscape.

Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events