of fair-goers waiting to go in. The gallery claims that it has managed to create the environment of the original bar but in a different context. Nevertheless, this bar is for sale at £350,000, not including transport or VAT.

There are other examples of environments that have been similarly 'airlifted' into the fair: a rubbish dump from the Appetite Gallery in Buenos Aires, with the artists rummaging through the garbage; a man in a suit - from the Fair Gallery - standing with a sign board hung around his chest saying, 'Help me to Find a Wife'.

While these installations have a humorous side, they came across like a pack of tourist postcards, simply replicating different environments and experiences. Rather than invite you into a world of fantasy and feeling, they distance the viewer from experiencing the actual threat our environment is under. So much so, that after several turns around Frieze I began to feel I was surrounded by autistic objects in an autistic world.

In child development, autism is a normal

state of mind in infancy in which pleasure is sought through bodily sensations, and objects in the external environment are used for this purpose and are not perceived as having a life of their own. It is a state of omnipotence over the environment that obliterates separation and relationship.

Autism becomes abnormal when an infant needs to defend himself against being left too much alone to cope with the hazards of the environment. This is experienced as a traumatic separation and loss. Then the infant retreats into a sealed-off world in which he tries to re-create this earlier sense of omnipotence.

It is a sensual world totally within his control. The environment is nothing more than a collection of objects, stripped of meaning except for the sensual pleasure they may give. This is why children and adults who suffer from autism are so impenetrable and so hard to relate to.

As well as the 'airlifted' installations, environmental awareness is evident at Frieze in other pieces such as a water