Where to start with Frieze London

This week in London, the autumn art calendar shifts into high gear in London as ‘Frieze Week’ unveils a city-wide smorgasbord of gallery exhibitions, new major museum shows and art fairs. Blockbuster museum shows such as a much-anticipated Francis Bacon portrait show at the National Portrait Gallery open this week, and city streets are filled with art-centered homages such as the Bond Street flags that this year highlights works from Gucci’s art programme exhibition  ‘Acts of Translation’. On view at its flagship store, textures and materials are placed in dialogue in the work of established and early-career artists, such as Bokani and Sonia Boyce. 

Reflecting on a controversial Venice Biennale that focused on “Foreigners Everywhere” (with just another month to go!) quite a few galleries are taking the opportunity to highlight artists whose work is included in Venice. Josh Lilley’s booth in Frieze London will feature the hauntingly mystical paintings of visual artist, writer, and activist of the Uitoto Áimen people in the Peruvian Amazon Rember Yahuarcani.  In Mayfair, tucked away in their private room, Saatchi Yates has installed a salon-style hang of paintings and works on paper by Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa with drawings by Pablo Picasso. In contrast, the gallery’s public space features the highly anticipated formal gallery debut of Hypebeast favorite Olaolu Slawn. The drop-style release of 1000 paintings at £1,000 was a stroke of genius to connect the artist’s art fair debut with his mass appeal.

Frieze London (the contemporary fair) and Frieze Masters (a more historical and Modern art focus) in Regent’s Park are the crown jewels of their namesake week, with an incredible, curated selection of galleries from all over the world showing a diverse array of work. People often wonder what makes one art fair different from another, and it’s the attention to detail in curating the galleries that participate as well as monitoring what they are allowed to show so that visitors can be assured they are seeing a ‘peer-reviewed’ selection of work. The social calendar keeps things buzzy, but taking some time to look through the programming and the materials that outline what each section offers is a wonderful way to enhance any arts education.

South of the park in Berkeley Square, PAD offers a sophisticated, design-focused counterpart to Frieze art-only fairs, and further south still at Somerset House the veteran African Art Fair 1-54 offers a focus on arts of the African diaspora with galleries from the continent as well as around the world. There’s also a lot of buzz around scrappy newcomer Minor Attractions at the Mandrake Hotel, a welcome addition to interject some more cutting edge, emerging art in the scene. 

Interest in highlighting art of the non-traditional Western canon is high this year, with painting (especially figurative) still a favorite, but I find that there is renewed interest in highlighting the language of tactility and texture. The use of ceramics, glass and fabric have been materials of choice equally for artists as well as craftsmen in traditionally ‘other-ed’ artistic traditions. At 1-54, nomadic gallery Superposition will have a solo presentation of new glass works by Nigerian artist Layo Bright, a continuation from the artist’s first solo museum exhibition at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut. Bright is known for working across many diverse media such as wood, casted molds and ‘Ghana must Go’ canvas bags. NY-based Latchkey Gallery will have ‘fiber creations’ by Josie Roebuck, an American artist whose practice addresses hardships and resilience, exclusions and triumphs, and ultimately finds a path to healing.

Thomas Dane gallery in Mayfair has an achingly elegant show of ceramic work by Dame Magdalene Odundo. Beautiful and simplistic, the works are breath of fresh air and feel simultaneously familiar and subversively contemporary. Known for her refined forms and understanding of clay’s profound capacity for material storytelling, Odundo draws influence from a broad compass of historical and contemporary making practices. According to the gallery, Odundo’s work embodies her research into traditional techniques and vernacular ceramic traditions across the world, exploring diasporic identity and recognising the power of objects as repositories of intercultural meaning.

Highlighting the range of style in ceramic traditions, over in Fitzrovia TAFETA gallery has launched a curatorial program focused on icons of 20th century African Art with a group show that features the ceramics of Isis Dove-Edwin, who uses the West African ceramic tradition of building pots with rolled coils of terracotta clay. Dove-Edwin is attracted to the infinite potential of clay to hold memory, and express different ideas through materiality, process, and form. 

Stretching the imagination of what counts as material, at the Camden Art Centre a historic show of work by radical New York-based, Moroccan-born artist Nicola L. shows the range of her practice over the years as a feminist and activist artist, including interactive “skin” centered works in physical space as well as in film highlights from performances from across the globe as many of the works only come “alive” when performed or interacted with. 

Then shifting to the immaterial, exhibits such as ‘Reverb‘ at creative mecca 180 Studios highlights the intersection of art and sound, while iconic LA based artist Lauren Halsey’s highly anticipated UK debut ‘emajendat’ will re-imagine the Serpentine as a wholly immersive funk garden. Proving that experience is also choice material, self-identifying women and men dressed as women are invited to participate in a rarely staged interactive public performance piece by beloved YBA wild child Sarah Lucas at T.J. Boulting. As part of a radical group show ‘Un Oeuf Is Un Oeuf’ that explores the egg as a muse and symbol,  Lucas is staging her performance work ‘1000 Eggs: For Women’ which will see a thousand eggs thrown against the gallery wall to create a giant abstract painting. The egg throwing work has multiple references, incorporating performance, action painting and protest. It alludes to both egg as the traditional medium of painting, via egg tempera, as well as the symbol of women’s fertility and reproduction, and the throwing of eggs by women as a protest against the control of women bodies, both socially and politically.

Happy Frieze-ing!

Main image: Slawn, Hot Head, 2024, Acrylic, ink and spray paint on canvas, 170 x 200 cm. Image courtesy Saatchi Yates.