The Frieze Art Fair is an event that, as an artist, one can hardly afford to miss. Bringing together artists, artworks and buyers from all over the world, it gives us the opportunity to spend an entire day immersed in the creative endeavours of some of the world’s most renowned artists. Frieze is first and foremost for the gallery owner and the buyer, as it can be an intimidating environment for anyone who can afford the £25 admission fee – the first indication of the commercial and often elitist nature of the fair. The elitism of frieze is evident in that the average entrant would have to spend a year’s wages on a piece of work, and that some of the pieces on show are conceptual only in the sense that they lose all relevance outside of the gallery environment.

This year the fair, held at Regents Park, showed off the usual array of big names such as Tracey Emin, Jim Lambie, Cindy Sherman and Jeremy Deller, but it was the lesser known artists and galleries that really impressed. As always there was a distinct lack of new media work because this format is less commercial but there were, however, a few galleries willing to stick their neck out to put on a good show.

Timothy Taylor’s gallery in London had an entertaining and cleverly selected series of works, and despite the arbitrary inclusion of a Bridget Riley painting (an artist represented by no less than four galleries) they managed to include works by Diane Arbus and Richard Patterson, whose ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Older Man‘ (2009) was a compelling piece of mixed media work.

One of the only galleries daring enough to put together a show of video works, aside from the dozens of 16mm projectors buzzing and clunking there way through the fair, was Sadie Coles gallery. A real effort was made by the curator to create an experience for the viewer and not just the buyer. The images, by Hilary Lloyd, were HD projections of mirrors, light and colour, both aesthetically interesting and surprisingly innovative for a fair that has always placed profits above innovation.

Other video work was presented by Yeondoo Jung and Sebastian Diaz Morales. Morales’ two channel video projection (thankfully in HD) entitled ‘The Way Between Two Points (Terra Incognita)‘ (2009) about the sparseness of Patagonia, was eerie but addictive viewing. One last piece of video to mention is Carlo Zanni’s ‘The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success’, a two minute short played on an ipod. Initially an interesting prospect, but the film itself and the strange plastic figure stuck to the screen left us feeling bored and slightly irritated at having taken the effort to cross the room at all.

German gallery Eigen + Art had an oddly curated space that showed off some of the more interesting photographic works. Martin Eder’s large glossy prints of odd looking women and all their flaws kept the viewers and the buyer’s interest for longer than most other photographic pieces. Having said this, Jemima Stehli’s ‘Photo Performance 31 with Larry Bell Sculpture’ was an unexpected treat. Jemima stands in a gallery next to Larry Bell’s mirror sculpture then strips naked and places the flash in her mouth to take the photo. This kind of work is why people other than those in the business come to Frieze. Jemima posits questions about authenticity, authorship, performance, and the photograph (aside from its theoretical appeal) is a comical piece of relief from a mentally and physically exhausting day.

The experience of the day was at Stephen Friedman’s gallery. Jim Hodges ‘the dark gate’ was a pitch black room with only a small shed and a wall of very sharp blades, creating a unique and terrifying environment, filling the participants with an ‘unsettling sense of intrigue, menace and intense beauty’.

In previous years the fair has been littered with obscene works, gory paintings, suspect images of children, illuminous pink vaginas and a phallus at every turn. This year, whilst symbolism was still there, I only counted a handful of explicit as opposed to implicit works. In their place are dozens of works about celebrity. Work like Phil Collins’ (unfortunately not ‘Easy Lover’ Phil Collins) altered photograph of Britney Spears with her eyes and mouth cut out and emblazoned with the words ‘I Suck’ was entertaining if nothing else. Gillian Wearing’s photograph of herself dressed as Robert Mapplethorpe represents artists as celebrity, something that in my view underpins the Frieze art fair. Turning artists into celebrities is big business with those at the top (Damien Hirst) worth in excess of £100 million. I’m not sure what all this means for the industry, perhaps the buyer’s taste is becoming more conservative or maybe artists are becoming tired of the obvious and blunt nature of profanity to labour a point.

Whatever the galleries of Frieze choose to put on, it would seem that the fair has become a fixed part of the art world’s calendar, as inevitable as the British summertime and unfortunately just as predictable.