Frank Heath

The works on view at Frieze intervene in New York's smaller uninhabited islands and their collective institutional history as dumping grounds for the quarantined, diseased, incarcerated, drug-addicted, and indigent. Asymptomatic Carrier (2013) focuses on abandoned North Brother Island (adjacent to Randall's Island) and its now defunct quarantine hospital. Famously the home of Typhoid Mary, the island and its structures have inexplicably been left untouched since its desertion in the early 1960s. The video pairs images from this overgrown, post-human landscape with audio from a peculiar telephone exchange whose caller claims to live on the island. Three other works, each pairing a photograph and sculpture, depict a series of items constructed, severed, and sent through the postal service to obsolete addresses on other uninhabited islands. Both delivery and return addresses on these parcels are undeliverable. They are insertions into the postal system, but with no possible way out.