Frieze London 2012: the speed-dating approach to art fairs - The Guardian

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Murder In Three Acts by Asli Cavusoglu. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

I bought a pint of milk at the farm shop at Frieze art fair. Big spender, me. I toyed with the rhubarb, and the spuds looked good, but it's all a pain to carry when you're cruising the commercial stands and the artists' projects, diving into talks and watching the film programme. The milk actually comes from Tesco, but is being resold for a pound a pint in protest against the squeeze big retailers put on dairy farmers, many of whom are going out of business. Is the milk for sale, I ask at the shop, part of Spanish artist and farmer Fernando García-Dory's contribution to the Grizedale Arts Project, based in the Lake District. Grizedale are here as one of Frieze's invited projects. "It is a shop," the assistant tells me. "Like all other stands here."

Lugging the milk around all day, up and down the aisles, from one gallery to the next, is a bore. I keep looking for something to pour it into, an urn or a vase, but these all seem to be on display over at Frieze Masters, the newly inaugurated and excellent fair of old and new art, on the other side of London's Regent's Park.

All art fairs are much the same. Frieze is a bit more fun, and better organised than most. But there is the same sense that, apart from schmoozing, a critic's only role here is to witness the collisions of taste, and to stare appalled at things no serious adult ought to want to own (a pink baby seal, stranded on the floor of the Gagosian stand; a searing fluorescent pink floor, by Korean artist Koo Jeong-A; a life-like and very hairy naked humanoid mannequin at some gallery or other. A lot of the stands, let alone the art, quickly homogenise. Meanwhile, my milk has started to curdle.

I have no idea how collectors cope, but fairs provide a context they seem comfortable in. Most dealers sell more at fairs than they do in their galleries. This week it is Frieze London; next week they will all move to the big fair in Paris, FIAC. Finding a quiet moment to actually look at art is extremely difficult. Some galleries, like London's MOT International, who are screening a film by Turner prize contender Elizabeth Price, do it with dignity – in a little cinema, away from the main drag. An entire show of work by Canadian artist Geoffrey Farmer fills Casey Kaplan's booth. Farmer was a hit at the recent Documenta exhibition in Kassel, with his field of cut-out images from the entire run of Life magazine; here, his works retreat in all the surrounding roar and razzmatazz. Setting out in search of some hot young star, I find myself looking at some funny, modest photographs of furry little guinea pigs, by Josephine Pryde, at Reena Spaulings' stand. You ask yourself not why Pryde took them, but why you're looking.

Often, it is the free panel discussions and talks, the commissioned artists' projects and the film screenings that provide a bit of mental heft. Of the commissions, the filming of a murder mystery within the fair looks the most fun. Who did what and to whom, you ask, of Turkish artist Asli Çavusoglu's Murder in Three Acts. I nearly tried to inveigle myself into being pelted with over-ripe tomatoes back at the Grizedale project, but ran away at the last moment. On Saturday I shall eat a vermin dinner there, with Japanese knotweed, Himalayan balsam and squirrel on the menu. Please note: I like my squirrel red.

The project that excites me most is by British artist Ed Fornieles, at Carlos/Ishikawa gallery. Fornieles has set up Characterdate, in which you can sign up and get a date at the fair. The trick is that you have to adopt a fake identity, which you have to make up and improvise when you create your profile. I am Reiner. I am German. I am powerful, rich and self-aware. I am a polymorphously perverse international jewel thief (well, I had to think of something). My date is in half an hour. Apparently, a "team of scenario prototyping experts" will begin expanding my new reality. If I'm lucky, my whole way of life might get tweaked, and I could begin to see things – even Frieze – with fresh eyes. Just call me Reiner.

London 2012 Olympics get national newspaper websites on track for ... - The Guardian

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Mail Online: London 2012 Olympics coverage helped it top 100 million monthly unique browsers in August

The London 2012 Olympics proved to be digital gold for UK national newspaper websites, with daily unique website users up more than 10% in August for several titles.

Mail Online consolidated its position as the most popular UK newspaper website, cracking 100 million monthly unique browsers for the first time.

The network of websites, which vies with the New York Times digital network for the title of most popular global newspaper, reported an 8% month-on-month rise in monthly unique browsers to 105,720,020 in August.

Daily unique browsers rose 7% compared with July to 6,557,117, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures published on Thursday.

Independent.co.uk reported the largest proportional increase with a 22.5% month-on-month surge in daily unique browsers to 908,579. Monthly unique browsers rose more than 20% to 19,342,706.

This was enough to keep Independent.co.uk ahead of Mirror Group Digital, the website network that includes Mirror.co.uk, 3am.co.uk and MirrorFootball.co.uk, which showed the smallest month-on-month growth among the national titles that have their figures audited and published by ABC.

Mirror Group Digital increased its daily unique browsers by 2.5% month on month to 839,538; monthly unique browsers rose just 1.1% to 16,944,367.

Guardian News & Media's website network, guardian.co.uk, which includes MediaGuardian, also had a good month, with a rise of more than 10% in daily unique browsers compared with July to 3,816,464.

GNM reports ABC-audited monthly users every other month and no official figure was published for August. According to unofficial internal figures guardian.co.uk had 69.5 million monthly uniques in August.

Telegraph.co.uk's daily unique users were up 6% month on month to 2,750,404. Monthly unique users grew by 4% compared with July to 53,915,491.

Metro, Associated Newspapers' free sister title to the Daily Mail which proved a hit in print with advertisers during the Olympics, also had an encouraging month online.

Metro.co.uk saw daily unique browsers rise more than 5% compared with July to 373,840. Monthly unique browsers grew by 3% month on month to 8,665,866.

News International's Sun Online proved that the Olympic effect was not restricted to mid-market and quality titles with a healthy 13% boost in monthly unique browsers compared with July, to 28,566,431. Daily unique browsers rose 9% month on month to 1,661,915.

The London Evening Standard increased its daily unique browsers by 1% month on month to 171,080; monthly unique browsers crept up 0.5% on July to 3,881,230.

Daily average browsers: 6,557,117

Month-on-month change: +7.01%

Year-on-year change: +48.88%

Monthly browsers: 105,720,020

Month-on-month change: +7.93%

Year-on-year change: +41.11%

Daily average browsers: 3,816,464

Month-on-month: +10.5%

Year-on-year: +24.77%

Monthly browsers: n/a

Month-on-month: n/a

Year-on-year: n/a

Daily average browsers: 2,750,404

Month-on-month: +5.76%

Year-on-year: +27.93%

Monthly browsers: 53,915,491

Month-on-month: +4.06%

Year-on-year: +31.73%

Daily average browsers: 1,661,915

Month-on-month: +8.95%

Year-on-year: n/a

Monthly browsers: 28,566,431

Month-on-month: +13.24%

Year-on-year: n/a

Daily average browsers: 908,579

Month-on-month: +22.45%

Year-on-year: +36.69%

Monthly browsers: 19,342,706

Month-on-month: +20.47%

Year-on-year: +30.96%

Daily average browsers: 839,538

Month-on-month: +2.48%

Year-on-year: +17.24%

Monthly browsers: 16,944,367

Month-on-month: +1.1%

Year-on-year: +13.52%

Daily average browsers: 373,840

Month-on-month: +5.22%

Year-on-year change: n/a

Monthly browsers: 8,665,866

Month-on-month: +2.98%

Year-on-year: n/a

Daily average browsers: 171,080

Month-on-month change: -1.08%

Year-on-year: n/a

Monthly browsers: 3,881,230

Month-on-month change: +0.42%

Year-on-year: n/a

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London 2012 Olympic Games: a digital triumph - The Guardian (blog)

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A record number of spectators attended the London 2012 Olympic Games. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

What makes a good Olympic Games great?

Four years ago I was speaking to the organisers of the Sydney Games to see what communications lessons we could learn from what, until London 2012, was considered the most successful Games ever.

Sydney had gone down as the ultimate sporting party, and had allowed the world to look at Australia in a new light. I was trying to work out, from a government point of view, what kind of Games we wanted London to be.

There were three lessons I took from Sydney:

First, a successful few weeks of sport is not enough – a Games can be so much more. You hear this time and again from every city that hosts a major sporting event. So from the outset, we were determined to put plans in place that were ambitious enough to match Locog and the government's wildest dreams of success in 2012. That could turn a good Games into a great Games, and make sure that people are not just talking about it for decades to come, but feeling the benefits too.

For communications, one of the main challenges in the first few years was convincing people just how big this would be, and how big an opportunity for the country. By the time we got to "super Saturday" or "thriller Thursday", and the whole country and the media would be united in awe of the Games, it would be too late. The foundations needed to be in place long before.

That's why we were talking tirelessly about legacy right from the start. It was a tough message, with years to go before 2012 Olympics and with the media focus on building the venues and hitting the budget. But it was vital to the government's goals.

And that's why we launched, a year ahead of the Games, a co-ordinated, cross-government campaign – the GREAT campaign – to promote Britain abroad with confidence even in difficult times. Having the confidence to go out to the world and promote what Britain has to offer, during the economic downturn, and through last year's riots, has set us in good stead now we aim to generate £13bn in economic benefits from the combined efforts around London 2012.

And that was the second lesson from Sydney: collective success is the best way of delivering individual triumph for everyone involved. Simplicity of messages and clarity about what you want to say, are crucial.

We brought together staff from every government department across Whitehall to work in one communications directorate. The largest cross government communications operation ever. We had one website, twitter-feed and phone number. One message.

Our priority was simple: remove the barriers to effective collective communication. By creating a culture in which sharing communications was the norm and not the exception, most of the job was done.

This was tough given the scale and complexity of the challenge: 25,000 international and national media over at the Park and thousands more across London; 19 government departments with roles to play delivering the Games; alongside Locog, the GLA and all the sporting bodies. Stakeholders ranged from the Met Office to Health Protection Agency to the utilities, all of which needed to be brought into a co-ordinated structure to maintain consistent messages.

We set up daily director of communication calls with our key partners, Locog, the GLA, the Met and core government departments. We spoke every day throughout the torch and the Games, so we could talk, share, decide and support. By the time of the athlete's parade, more than 125 teleconferences had taken place.

Part of that simplicity for the government was knowing when to speak, and when to be silent. Ahead of the Games, we talked legacy and explained the scale of the challenge ahead. But then it was crucial to provide the space for sport to shine through once the Games started. And how they shone.

The third lesson is, that in terms of communications, it's the two weeks before the Games, when the journalists need copy, but there is no sport, that are the most pressured. We saw it in South Africa in the last world cup when the focus was on crime and security. In Beijing, the focus was on human rights and pollution. In London, our issues were security and transport. We dealt with all of this in communications by putting in place our contingency planning. Our community of communications professionals got us through.

'Don't look back and wish you had done more' was the big warning from Sydney. Could we have done more? Of course there is no limit on what the government still wants to achieve with 2012, but everyone involved in the Games is confident that we have the foundations firmly in place to give London 2012 the lasting legacy that such an incredible Games deserves.

And perhaps the hidden legacy for the government from these Games is that we've got a generation of incredibly talented government communication specialists who have seen the value of this level of collaboration – which can only strengthen the effectiveness of government communications for the future.

Sarah Jones was director of communications at the Government Olympic Executive from 2008, and is deputy director of communications for Government Olympic Communications

This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Guardian Public Leaders Network free to receive regular emails on the issues at the top of the professional agenda.

London 2012 allows some Sunday nationals to increase sales - The Guardian

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ABC figures show that Sunday papers may not have set the world on fire, but most increased sales during London 2012. Photograph: Hou Jun/Xinhua/Corbis

The majority of UK's national Sunday newspapers bucked the trend of traditional August circulation declines with modest month-on-month gains on the back of the Olympics coverage.

Among the small increases reported by the papers, the Sunday Mirror was among the biggest winners recording a 2.16% increase on the previous month. Sales increased to 1,101,206 in August from July's figure of 1,077, 882, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures published on Friday.

The Independent on Sunday was also up month-on-month, by 4.16% on July's figure of 118,759 to record a circulation in August of 123,696 copies. Traditionally, the holiday month of August is when circulation slips as readers break their normal newspaper reading routines and go on holiday.

National newspaper websites will also be expecting a more hefty traffic boost when ABC figures for August are published later this month.

In August, the Sunday Telegraph was up 1.59% month-on-month to 463,733, while the Observer reported a 0.47% gain to record a 246,245 circulation last month, up on July's figure of 245,094.

Among the mid-market titles, the Sunday Express increased sales 0.48% month-on-month to 505,900 from 503,492 in July; while rival title the Mail on Sunday increased its circulation month on month by 1.8% from 1,779,449 in July to 1,811,463.

Taken year on year, however, the picture for the Sunday redtop and mid-market sectors looked bleaker, with all five titles bar the Sunday edition of the Sun reporting sizeable drops, reflecting how the circulation gains made last summer as a consequence of closure of the News of the World in July were subsequently wiped out.

Year-on-year, the Daily Star Sunday was down 40.99%, the Sunday Mirror down 42.06% and the People down 48.66%.

The Sunday Express was down 25.36% year on year, while the Mail on Sunday was down 13.67%.

All the quality Sunday title's were also down year on year, although the declines were generally less severe than among the tabloids.

More details soon...

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London 2012: High jinx hindered Australia's swimmers, claims D ... - The Guardian

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James Roberts, a member of Australia's 4x100 team who finished fourth, admitted swimmers had misbehaved. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images

Schoolboy pranks, over-inflated egos, a lack of team unity and unrealistic expectations are some of the reasons for Australia's poor showing in the 2012 Olympic swimming pool, according to some of the team members.

Australia's swimmers suffered their worst Olympic performance for 20 years in London, failing to win an individual title and ending up with one relay gold, six silver and three bronze medals.

Swimming Australia has announced a review into the disappointing display but is still framing the exact terms of reference and structure of the investigation.

Some individual team members, however, have already had their say on TV, while the submission of one key figure, the head coach Leigh Nugent, has been leaked.

Many of the initial reports focus on the behaviour of the men's 4x100 metres team, who, led off by 100m freestyle favourite James Magnussen, were expected to win gold but ended up out of the medals.

Tommaso D'Orsogna, who swam in the 4x100m heats, admitted to being party to misbehaviour during a pre-Games camp in Manchester, where squad members made prank phone calls and knocked on bedroom doors. "People are kind of saying: 'It's just boys being boys', but unfortunately I come back and I look back on that kind of thing and maybe that would be acceptable in schoolboy rugby … but this is the Australian Olympic team," he told Channel 10 TV.

"That kind of behaviour shouldn't be tolerated nor should it be allowed. I can definitely confirm that there's no way that any other Australian team that went away to the Olympics would have been mucking around and doing that stuff."

Libby Trickett, who helped Australia to the women's 4x100m gold in her third Olympics, said the team spirit had not been the same as she had previously experienced. "Obviously this is the first year I've been on the team since 2009, and I just felt in previous years there was a more cohesive unit," she told Fox TV.

Nugent's report to the Swimming Australia board, leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald, failed to mention problems in the cohesion of the team and said he aimed to bring some perspective to the debate.

"It appears evident following the barrage of criticism the expectation placed on this team was based on the fantasy that the result from four years prior will automatically repeat itself regardless of the comparative world positioning," he wrote. "Our process is to evaluate objectively and to continue to improve from the low base we started from in 2009 and establish a higher platform to launch from in 2013. This is a time where we all need to pull together, not fall apart."

D'Orsogna, meanwhile, said he had witnessed favouritism for some of the bigger names in the team. "It is a little bit disappointing to see and I think it is part of the reason why the results in London weren't what we had expected, with people maybe putting themselves up a little bit higher than the rest of the team," he said.

As for the allegation that team members had been subjected to initiation rituals involving Stilnox – a strong sedative banned by the Australian Olympic Committee just before the Games – D'Orsogna preferred not to comment.

"I'm not going to be that guy that lies on media," he said. "I'm not going to be the guy that stands up here and lies to Australia but at the same time I'm just not going to comment."

Olympics 2012 organisers considered using Helen Mirren as ... - The Guardian

Olympics 2012: Daniel Craig as James Bond in Buckingham Palace with the Queen in the opening ceremony's James Bond spoof

The Olympics organisers considered using Helen Mirren to act as a double for the Queen in the opening ceremony's the spoof James Bond sequence if the monarch had declined their invitation to participate.

Martin Green, head of ceremonies for the Olympics ceremonies said, he and the director Danny Boyle were surprised the Queen agreed to do it and they had originally planned to use a body double.

The duo discussed using the actor – who played the Queen in the film of the same name – if the royal family agreed to allowing them to film in Buckingham Palace. "We did talk about Helen Mirren," said Green at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.

"Danny and I went to see her private secretary. We showed him in storyboard form what we wanted to do. He took it away to show to the Queen and the answer came back 'yes'.

"At the time we thought we were going to do it with a body double. And the big surprise came was when we said 'We need to address the sensitive subject of a body double' and they said 'Why? She's going to do it,'" Green told the delegates at the event.

Speaking for the first time about the ceremony, Green said the opening ceremony took two years to plan and their mission was to create "a live Danny Boyle film". Asked whether anything had gone wrong on the night which drew more than 27 million TV viewers, he replied "No".

He rejected the assertion that it was too leftwing, as claimed by some critics including Tory MP Aidan Burley who tweeted on the night that it was "multicultural crap", adding that the thinking behind the event was a "great celebration of our institutions".

He was less unequivocal about the closing ceremony and betrayed some frustration over George Michael's much-criticised decision to use his spot on the night to showcase his new single White Light.

Martin refused to give a straight answer to the question about why the singer was allowed to showcase a new song, saying the star felt "passionately" about performing it and that he was "really glad to see George in the show".

He revealed that the opening ceremony for the Paralympics on Wednesday will be very different, featuring classical music, opera and science sequences inspired by the competitors' life stories.

The BBC's head of Olympics coverage, Roger Mosey, denied that the corporation was wrong not to have bid more for the Paralympics, which will be shown by Channel 4, saying it was good another broadcaster was involved.

Presenter Hazel Irvine, one of the main anchors of the BBC coverage, said she would have found it difficult to muster the same levels of energy to front another Games so soon. "I would find it hard to climb the mountain again," she said – but added that thought the BBC could have "fought harder" to get the Paralympics rights.

Mosey conceded however that it had "turned up" the coverage of the Paralympics on Radio 5 Live, which has the radio rights, but denied it had judged it wrong by not handing over the station to the Games for the same 6am to 1am coverage it afforded the main event.

He confirmed that BBC director general Mark Thompson intervened towards the end of the Olympics to address alleged jingoism, but said it was right as both he and Thompson thought there were small gaps in coverage of non-British stars.

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The Olympics remind us of Britain's baroque heritage - The Guardian (blog)

Britain's baroque age 'culminated in great mixed-media theatres of power like Blenheim Palace'. Photograph: The Travel Library/Rex Feature

The baroque is one of the great ages of British art. This week's Story of British Art is dedicated to it. But what is the baroque? It is a grand, florid style that first appeared in Italy around 1600 when artists and architects burst out of classical rules to create emotive, dynamic images and overwhelming spaces. Caravaggio's painting The Seven Acts of Mercy is a powerful expression of the baroque. So is Bernini's awe-inspiring multimedia installation the Cathedra Petri in St Peter's.

This Olympic summer exploded just about every cliche of British national identity. Stiff upper lip? Yeah, right. Severe and puritanical? You're kidding? The Olympics revealed a nation of extravagant, theatrical fun. You might even say a baroque nation. That talent for spectacle should come as no surprise because Britain took powerfully to the baroque the first time around, in the 17th century. The gore of Jacobean tragedy is totally baroque. Artists including Peter Paul Rubens, Gianlorenzo Bernini and Artemisia Gentilsechi worked for Britain's baroque monarch, Charles I. Sadly for him, there were plenty of Puritans around too. Early Stuart architectural extravagances like the Queen's House in Greenwhich and the Banqueting House in Whitehall – with its ceiling by Rubens – did not exactly reassure them about the dynasty's grand self-image.

The baroque age in Britain was bloody – it includes the Civil War and the execution of Charles I. Yet art and architecture kept on getting better and better. Van Dyck is the portraitist of Charles I's court, Peter Lely of Charles II's. The Great Fire of London was terrifying yet cleared the ground for the architectural masterpieces of Wren and Hawksmoor.

This was the age when British world power started to matter. By the end of the 17th century, London was taking over from Amsterdam as the leading entrepôt of global trade and the British navy was getting ready to rule the waves. Baroque magnificence was the perfect art to express Britannia's newfound glory. In 1698 Wren designed an enormous domed dining hall for officers of the Royal Navy at Greenwich: the "Painted Hall" was decorated with flamboyant murals by Sir James Thornhill that make it one of the most amazing interiors in Britain. In 1729 Thornhill's daughter Jane married a young printmaker and painter called William Hogarth. In Hogarth's art the energy of the baroque is transformed into grotesque comic abundance.

This is an age when art and architecture are one, culminating in great mixed-media theatres of power like Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. In its quest for potent images and its mixing of all media to create an effect, baroque Britain (1600-1730) has a lot in common with the baroque Britain of 2012.

Olympics 2012: third of Team GB medallists came from private schools - The Guardian

Olympics long jump champion Greg Rutherford was state-educated. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

More than a third of British medal winners in the 2012 London Olympics were from private schools, which educate 7% of the school population, a study by the Sutton Trust shows.

The dominance of private schools is particularly evident in sports such as rowing where more than half of gold medallists were privately educated, with fewer than a third coming from state comprehensives and the rest from grammars.

However, gold-medal winning athletes Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford were state-educated, as were all the boxers, and all but one of the 12 medal-winning cyclists.

Team GB won 65 medals, 29 of them gold. The proportion of state-educated gold medal winners is broadly similar to previous Games. The proportion of privately educated Olympic winners (37%) is similar to that for MPs (35%), but less than leading journalists (54%) or judges (70%), according to previous Sutton Trust studies.

The focus on the school backgrounds of Britain's successful Olympians has prompted an inquest into the state of school sport in comprehensives.

Prime minister David Cameron has called for a revival of competitive sport in primary schools, while the government has been criticised for selling off playing fields and cutting funds for school sports partnerships.

Lord Moynihan, the chairman of the British Olympic Association, has said it was "wholly unacceptable" that half of Team GB's gold medallists in Beijing four years ago were privately educated and called for an overhaul of school sport policy to redress the balance.

Moynihan said earlier this month that the figure was "one of the worst statistics in British sport" and it should be a priority to make sport a more accurate reflection of society.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: "While we congratulate all our Olympic winners, this research shows that independent school students are more than five times over-represented amongst our medal winners relative to their proportion in the population – which is also the case at leading universities and in the professions more generally.

"This comes as no surprise as children in independent schools benefit from ample time set aside for sport, excellent sporting facilities and highly qualified coaches, while in many state schools sport is not a priority, and sadly playing fields have been sold off."

A new draft PE curriculum, to be published in the autumn, will make it compulsory to take part in what the government describes as "recognised and recognisable sports" such as football, hockey and netball. It will also prescribe "team outdoor and adventurous activity".

A separate analysis by the Good Schools Guide finds that 70% of gold medallists attended a state secondary school. Both studies counted medallists in team sports individually. The Guardian's Datablog has also analysed medal-winners by type of school.

Labour has urged Cameron to include more than 130,000 pupils who study at free schools and academies in plans to make competitive team sports compulsory.

Cameron announced last week proposals for primary age children and criticised schools for holding Indian dance classes instead.

The prime minister, who is under fire for scrapping a target for pupils to do two hours of sport a week, said the new requirement would be included in the revised national curriculum.

Shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg, said Cameron's suggestions would only change those schools under the control of local authorities, and not academies or free schools.

"Sport isn't just for some schools, but for all schools. Labour wants to ensure that all pupils get access to high quality sports provision so they can do competitive sports and physical activity," he said.