A walk in the park can become a bad dream #2:Locked Out of the Love-In.

"There's a house with no door and I'm living there. At nights it gets so cold and the days are hard to bear inside" - House With No Door, Van der Graaf Generator.

Richard Woods's Holiday Home (Regent's Park) sculpture that greets you as you enter the 2018 Frieze Sculpture Park is an apposite way to kick off a free exhibition that is far busier, and far more interactive, if not by design, than last year's show. Undoubtedly that's down to the fact that the main business of the Frieze Art Fair is taking place further west in Regent's Park. Near the boating lake.

As the VIP cars pull up near Queen Mary's Gardens those of us who have not been given an 'in' on the art world, the outsiders, keen novices, and curious tourists alike are siphoned off into a corner of the park and given the ol' bread and circuses of a free exhibition of modern sculpture to keep us happy, or at least distracted.

For me, a proud pleb, a fully paid up member of the hoi polloi, it works. I'd rather be here in the October sunshine watching the kids swing and climb on the sculptures (despite the near constant signage expressly forbidding climbing and even touching) than drinking Prosecco with a load of nobs and having my ego massaged by chauffeurs and vol-au-vents (or whatever it is they have these days). Honest. Seriously. Why would I lie? 

Richard Woods - Holiday Home (Regent's Park) (2018)

Woods's work plays on the idea of how the elite live in gilded prisons, the 'holiday home' looks pretty nice in theory, certainly plenty were posing for photos in front of it, but, in reality, those outside can't get in but, perhaps worse, those inside can't get out. Where would you rather be?

I'd rather have been outside anyway (see I was honest and serious) and that's why I wasn't upset about not being at the main art fair. Besides, most of the big galleries were showing in the park. Alan Cristea were representing Woods (whose work also touched on London's housing crisis) and elsewhere there were contributions from such major players as White Cube, Victoria Miro, Gagosian, Lisson, Sadie Coles, Timothy Taylor, Hauser & Wirth, Marian Goodman, Blain/Southern, and Parafin. 

The works ranged from the political to the whimsical, the playful to the austere, the confusing to the overstated to, in one case, the almost invisible. The first one I saw as I entered the park was Kiki Smith's Seer (Alice I). From 2005 it was older than most of the works in the show and had possibly been included because it raised questions about the patriarchal art world, representations of the female form in art, and Alice in Wonderland author's Lewis Carroll's ambivalent relationship with young girls.

Kiki Smith - Seer (Alice I) (2005)

It was topical, it was relevant, but it was a little underwhelming. Slightly more impressive was Bharti Kher's The Intermediary Family. Looking like something that could belong either in a Hindu temple or at the Wellcome Collection the plate outside, there's one in front of each work giving a brief explanation/sketch, suggests "they are cross-breeds, half-breeds and half-bloods" summoning into being "the trickster, enchantress and shaman" in the visitor and, also, that they represent "djinns" and "outsiders". Outsiders again. They're not gonna let us forget we're not at the main party are they?

Bharti Kher - The Intermediary Family (2018)

John Baldessari - Penguin (2018)

John Baldessari's Penguin was especially popular with the kids. I had to wait for quite a while to get a photo without a random stranger's child in it (I find some people don't take too kindly to middle aged men taking photos of their children). Certainly fitting into the 'whimsical' end of this spectrum it still put a smile on my face and will hopefully find gainful employment outside an ice cream concession stand in London Zoo the other side of the park some time soon.

Virginia Overton's Untitled piece also had the youngsters happy as they were able to hide behind it and peer out at their unsuspecting peers and elders as they passed. It's less likely that Sean Scully's Shadow Stack was going to attract the youth vote being, essentially, a massive pile of steel. I liked it though. It made a neat juxtaposition with the autumnal leaves and blue skies of the park.

Virginia Overton - Untitled (122 x 244 View) (2018)

Sean Scully - Shadow Stack (2018)

Simon Periton - Outdoor Miner (2018)

Simon Periton's Outdoor Miner came from a completely different angle, it almost blended into the park, but to equally satisfying effect. The fact it was named after one of Wire's best songs didn't do its chances of a positive review any harm either. I'm not sure I'm really getting any "psychedelic and alchemic resonances" from it but "Art Nouveau designs and ornamental tracery" certainly come through loud and clear. This is one work that was worth waiting until autumn to see as I believe the brown fall-en leaves that surround it only add to it.

If Periton's work blended in to the surroundings then Monika Sosnowska's Rebar 12 as much as disappeared. It was a little, though not a lot, easier to spot in the park than it is in this photograph. There are basically a load of steel reinforcing rods suspended from the branches of the tree. It looks like an old bicycle that's had various parts stripped away by scavengers but the claim is the Polish artist is exploring "the psychological resonance of the exposed architectural fragment as the built environment continually evolves". Not sure I'm buying that but it did make me scratch my head and wonder where the work was for a good thirty seconds or so and I do like a puzzle. A crossword, a sudoku, a suguru, or, some steel reinforcing rods suspended from a tree. As long as I have at least a chance of solving it!

Monika Sosnowska - Rebar 12 (2017)

You could see Rana Begum's No.814 okay. In fact you could see, with various colour filters, right through it. This was, as with much art these days, one for the Instagram generation and the kids. As I have no kids and rarely use Instagram (but instead waste my time writing a blog hardly anyone reads) I skimmed fairly quickly past it and came to a work far more fitting for my current state of mind, the world's current state of mind.

I'd never heard of Tim Etchells before but on spotting his Everything is Lost I couldn't help both allow myself a little laugh as well a sign of weary resignation. There really is little you can say about it that hasn't already been said by the work. This is art as suicide note although a sneaking suspicion lingers that Tim Etchells is probably some rich artist who's simply trying to imagine how shit the times are for us mere mortals at the moment. Who knows? Maybe he's worried about all the crap that's going down too. It'd be hard not to be.

Rana Begum - No.814 (2018)

Tim Etchells - Everything is Lost (2018)

Kathleen Ryan - il Volatile (2018)

Kathleen Ryan's il Volatile looks more like the vernacular architecture of playgrounds and leisure parks than a work of art itself. As I was in a park looking at I had to double check it was part of the exhibition so in that respect, like Sosnowska earlier, it at least made me check in my preconceptions of what is art and what is not. Don't expect an answer on that any time soon. 

Dan Graham's London Rococo seemed like a good spot to sit and ponder it. I had a can of pop in my bag and some articles in The Observer I'd been looking forward to reading and this seemed an ideal opportunity. I've always felt art galleries should have the coffee shops halfway round rather than at the end so this, at least, came about a quarter of the way to meeting me there. If any of that sounds disrespectful of Dan Graham then don't fret. His work aims to investigate "notions of inclusion and exclusion" and turn "the traditional viewer of the work into both performer and spectator" and what could be me more performative, as well as a great photo op, than me drinking a can of fizzy drink and pondering Andrew Rawnsley's take on Theresa May's attempt to hold the centre ground within a Conservative party torn asunder by Brexit insanity.

Dan Graham - London Rococo (2012)

Kimsooja - A Needle Woman:Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir (2014)

Kimsooja's Shard-like structure threatens to unfold "the notion of a needle as an intersection between distance and memory threading across a cosmic scale" which is way more word salad than is really required for what's actually quite a pleasant piece. It certainly catches the eye quicker than Tracey Emin's A Moment Without You which, from a distance, just looks like some poles shoved into the ground.

Closer inspection reveals each pole is topped with a metal bird with the aim of emphasising that "birds are the angels of this earth and that they represent freedom". As if to remind us that humans are the very opposite (we seem to have a need to codify, control, and destroy) there were some of the younger examples of our species shaking these poles quite furiously in an attempt to get the 'birds' to fall off.

Tracey Emin - A Moment Without You (2017)

Yoan Capote - Stress (2004)

Yoan Capote (another new name on me) uses teeth, including his own gnashers, for the casts that he's set between five blocks of stacked concrete. It's both macabre and curious as well as being one for fans of brutalist architecture, perhaps.

Conrad Shawcross's work, Optic Labyrinth (Arrangement I), also owes a debt to architecture, this time both modernist and ancient. I can see in it echoes of pyramids and ziggurats. It pleases the eye but if you're actually a fan of mazes you won't find yourself getting lost in this one for very long.

Conrad Shawcross - Optic Labyrinth (Arrangement I) (2018)

Michele Mathison - Parallax (2018)

Michele Mathison's Parallax looks like a load of bent and twisted streetlamps and that's, essentially, what it is. The Johannesburg artist is trying to draw attention to his native South Africa's "broken ubran infrastructure" in the form of memorials to the decay and collapse of former symbols of civic pride. It works, though it'd work better still in situ I think, but it is a little overshadowed by regular show off Barry Flanagan and one of his trademark bronze hares. 

Large Nijinski on Anvil Point saw Hartley 'dancing' triumphantly on the tip of an upturned anvil as if to assert the primacy of animals over materials. Though as the hare is made of bronze perhaps not!? Flanagan's dead so we can't ask him. Most contented themselves with taking a photo of the hare silhouetted against the skyline and why not? 

Barry Flanagan - Large Nijinski on Anvil Point (2001)

Hugo Wilson - Pact (2017-2018)

James Capper - TREADPAD B - PAIR 2 WALKING SHIP 40TON STANDARD DISPLACEMENT 4 LEG (DIA 1000) (2018)

Hugo Wilson's Pact was one of a few works that looked like they could belong in the park anyway. Wilson's trying to mix Italian baroque styles with the eighties cartoon Thundercats but to what aim I couldn't be sure. People seemed to enjoy fondling it though.

Adult people. People who could read the signs expressly telling them not to. I don't blame them though, and even the few officials seemed to have given up stopping people. It was the last day of the show after all. Children were even clambering over and swinging on James Capper's TREADPAD B which may not be what he was hoping for, judging by the bumf that informs us his work explores "relationships between engineering, organism and craft" and confronts "the precarity of technological desire", but was certainly what he got. I was with the kids. Mentally if not physically. Swinging on overhead things is more fun than pondering the precarity of technological desire and anyone who disagrees needs a long sit down to reconsider their own relationship between engineering, organism, and craft.

Elmgreen & Dragset have used bronze, stainless steel, wax, and black patina to create a vulture staring intently from a dark denuded tree as if to look back at us, the viewers, and ask how we'd like to be gawped at. Or perhaps, and maybe this is the autumn speaking, the vulture is waiting for us to go the way of all flesh so s/he can feast upon on our remains. I've not read Italo Calvino's Si par une nuit d'hiver un voyaguer, for which the work is named, so am unable to ascertain much from that except that I've been reliably informed it refers to Borgesian alternative realities. In which case it works rather well.

Elmgreen & Dragset - Si par une nuit d'hiver un voyageur (2017)

Haroon Gunn-Salie - Senzenina (2018)

One work where you certainly won't get the feeling of being looked at is Senzenina by another South African, Haroon Gunn-Salie. That's because it's made up of people with no eyes or, in fact, heads. This is a popular one with visitors and understandably so. It's very eye catching (for those of us lucky enough to have eyes, anyway).

It actually refers to a very serious subject. The Marikana massacre of 2012 in Rustenberg municipality, SA saw the police shoot and kill 34 striking mineworkers (78 were wounded) proving that if late capitalism is the thing many of us of a socialist bent hope it is it won't go down without a fight. A very very violent fight. One to the death. The cowering figures are modelled on police footage of the mineworkers at the time of the killings and the lack of heads surely represents the end of life.

It's pretty morbid and it's an uneasy juxtaposition with the majolica ballet pumps of Rachel Feinstein's pieces across the path. There's room for a lightness of touch in art, sometimes it feels absolutely necessary, but in this instance, and during these times, the art of powerful political protest wins out.

Rachel Feinstein - Octavio, Corine, Mezzetino, Chinoise (2018)

Larry Achiampong - PAN AFRICAN FLAGS FOR THE RELIC TRAVELLERS' ALLIANCE (2018)

Hope for the future comes in the final work I take in during my visit. Larry Achiampong's PAN AFRICAN FLAGS don't look much, so in that sense it's hard to really class them as art, but the combination of bright colours and Afrofuturistic forms suggests ascension, hints there is a bright future for Africa, but not just Africa, if we choose it. If we make the right decisions. If we do away with the culture of cruelty, the hatred, the blame, the victim shaming, the bullying, and all the other fucking shit that's been piling up for so long now it's started to feel like we're being crushed to death by an inexorable avalanche of lies and manipulation.

I may not have taken a picnic, as I threatened to last year, but, again, it was more of a dream than a nightmare. I got out, saw some interesting things, got a bit of fresh air, and forgot (or tried to forget, it's not totally possible) about the nightmares of Trump, Brexit, and the religious fundamentalism that underpins so much of what is wrong with the world for an hour or two. My favourite works were the ones by Wood, Scully, Periton, Etchells, and, of course, Gunn-Salie but, really, it's the whole experience that makes it worthwhile. There's nothing bad here. Not like out there.

So if the chattering classes of the proper Frieze Art Fair up the road were to invite me in, ply me with red wine, and ask me for, and pay me for, my opinions on art both modern and ancient I'd simply have to refuse, wouldn't I? ;-)