If you don’t have the cash to splash on a Hockney or an Emin, don’t sweat it, because there are plenty of free activities to delight in all over the capital this Frieze Week. At multiple spots around Tate Modern, long-standing non-profit Artangel, behind innovative exhibitions such as Steve McQueen’s Year 3, is presenting Remote, a new feature film by creatives Mika Rottenberg and Mahyad Tousi. It’s worth hopping on the Northern line up to Camden, where The Cob Gallery is presenting photographer Jack Davison’s strikingly beautiful works in his first-ever UK show until 12 November. Plus, Circa (which you may remember for keeping us entertained by showcasing art in public spaces during lockdown) is teaming up with the wonderfully eccentric and powerful artist Laure Prouvost, who brings us her first augmented reality project backed up by a print sale to benefit the great Choose Love charity. Go, go, go!
FOR THE UNINITIATED: YOUR BLOCKBUSTER SHOWS
THE REOPENING OF LEIGHTON AND SAMBOURNE HOUSES
Not your traditional show per se, but once the iconic home of Victorian artist and RA president Frederic Leighton, the Moorish brilliance of Leighton House is once again open for public view after a grand refurbishment, as is nearby Sambourne House. (rbkc.gov.uk)
FUSELI AND THE MODERN WOMAN: FASHION, FANTASY, FETISHISM AT THE COURTAULD
The recently refurbished Courtauld has been drawing gasps and this exhibition, examining 18th-century artist Henry Fuseli’s obsession with female sexuality in his work, will too. (courtauld.ac.uk)
CHRISTOPHER KULENDRAN THOMAS: ANOTHER WORLD AT THE ICA
Kulendran Thomas has taken over the ICA to present a multimedia show looking at the narratives around the liberation movement of the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan civil war. (ica.art)
TYLER THE (REAL) CREATOR
That Beyoncé cover-shoot for ‘Vogue’ catapulted then 23-year-old photographer Tyler Mitchell into a new realm of success, including being selected for the Time Magazine Next 100 by painter Amy Sherald. Now the Atlanta-born artist, who takes inspiration from the history of images of Black people in the American South, has opened his first UK solo show at mega gallery Gagosian. His contemporary portraiture — a football player with angel wings, a reclining figure enclosed by a picket fence — makes the familiar seem strange and challenging. Until 12 Nov (gagosian.com)
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
Want to study a true art collector in their natural habitat? Head to Masters, the sibling fair to Frieze London and often overlooked. A shame, really, because it’s the one place you can peruse a Botticelli, Monet or rarely seen Picasso up close before it disappears back into a private home. Naturally, it follows that Masters attracts an older, wealthier crowd (you’ll be just as dazzled by the hot-off-the-runway Bottega, Prada and Loewe as you will the art on the walls) but for first-timers, don’t be put off. Works to hunt down are an entire De Jonckheere gallery stand dedicated to Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and the curated booth Joan MiroÌ — After The War, presented by Helly Nahmad gallery. Top marks to readers if you can find this week’s cover: Joris Van Son’s ‘A Still Life of a Swag of Fruit hanging Before a Stone Alcove’ (and send us a snap if you do)
SOHEILA SOKHANVARI, REBEL REBEL AT THE CURVE, BARBICAN
‘I feel like I want to stand in solidarity with my sisters and my mothers in Iran right now,’ says Iranian/British artist Soheila Sokhanvari as she instals her work in the Barbican’s The Curve gallery for her upcoming show, Rebel, Rebel, commissioned originally in 2019.
‘It’s about really being able to drink in this incredible moment in culture between about 1936 and 1978,’ curator Eleanor Nairne adds. ‘This was when women in Iran were able to enjoy unprecedented, although still very complicated freedoms.’
The show couldn’t come at a more powerful time, after last month’s murder of Mahsa Amini in Tehran after she was detained by morality police for not wearing her hijab in a way that satisfied them, and the waves of protest that followed around the country (and indeed globally) advocating for greater women’s liberation.
It’s the theme that underpins the exhibition at the Barbican, too. Nairne worked on Rebel, Rebel with Sokhanvari to bring together painting and sculpture along with music by Iranian female musicians. The multimedia exhibition is inspired by photographs shot in the 1960s and 1970s of radical women from pre-revolutionary Iran, some of whom now live in exile.
‘I have been painting my family for many years, but I wanted to paint these icons who have either left Iran after the revolution in 1979 or been banned from their platform,’ Sokhanvari explains. ‘This story has been burning in my heart for many years.’
The stories and images of women such as poet and director Forough Farrokhzad, musician Googoosh and actress Roohangiz Saminejad, were captured at a time when the regime in Iran was less restrictive. But it’s their poses and attitude — smoking, sexy, defiant — that could not chime more with the current moment.
FEMALES AT THE FORE
The big-hitting female artists are out in full force this Frieze Week with Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall taken over by Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña. There is also Turner Prize-shortlisted Veronica’s Ryan’s show opening at Alison Jacques, and one not to miss is the first UK exhibition (left) from US painter Amy Sherald at Hauser & Wirth (you’ll remember her show-stopping official portrait of Michelle Obama). The UK’s Golden Lion winner at this year’s Venice Biennale, Sonia Boyce, has an exhibition at Simon Lee as well as being this year’s Cork Street Banner commission. And it doesn’t end there — have you seen Cecily Brown’s amazing mural-like painting at the newly renovated Courtauld Gallery? She has an exhibition opening at Thomas Dane Gallery. Victoria Miro is showing pieces by the legendary Alice Neel coinciding with an exhibition of her work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The Serpentine Galleries has a female double-header with sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Infinite Folds (multiple textures and shapes that evoke both the human and the nonhuman), and Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, whose paintings are inspired by spiritualism, women and nature.
TOTTENHAM HOTS UP
Studio spaces in the city have never been pricier, which is why so many of the capital’s rising stars are looking beyond Zone 1. Case in point: Tottenham. As home to collectives such as Snooze Fabric (best know for its street-art aesthetic) and young artists including Eloisa Henderson-Figueroa (think of her as the Lakwena of N15), it’s also where the Sarabande Foundation — founded by the late Lee Alexander McQueen — has unveiled its new network of affordable studios and workspaces (left). Tucked within a pair of Grade II-listed townhouses, each can be let at around £1 per square foot to artists and designers; it aims to help young creatives ‘to extend and explore their practice’. Time to go north and prosper.
Can’t decide which team to support? Who cares- with these auctions, everyone’s a winner
GOING, GOING… GONE!
Not into the footy? Delight in a different sport this Frieze Week: bidding wars. This year, two of London’s biggest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, are engaging in a great big charity play-off. In the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Auction on 15 October, you’ll find works by the likes of Wolfgang Tillmans (head to p28 to read our exclusive chat with the artist), Marlene Dumas, Anish Kapoor and Yinka Shonibare (right) up for grabs to benefit the ICA in honour of the institute’s 75th anniversary. Meanwhile, on 14 October Christie’s is including 23 works, including those by Beauford Delaney and Shirin Neshat, in its Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale to support The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (Ä°KSV) on the 50th anniversary of Turkey’s leading contemporary arts institution. Can’t decide which team to support? Who cares — everyone’s a winner.
DINING ART
Paint brushes at the ready! This week, London’s hospitality and art scenes are working together to make their mark. First up, look out for one of Lucian Freud’s final portraits, this time starring The Wolseley mastermind Jeremy King, which is coming to auction at Sotheby’s on 15 October. Meanwhile, heavyweight gallery Hauser & Wirth, which branched out a few years ago by adding rooms to its rural outpost in Bruton and acquiring Dean Street members’ club The Groucho earlier this year under its new arm, ‘Artfarm’, has just unveiled The Audley. It’s a traditional boozer in Mayfair complete with a spectacular Phyllida Barlow mural. And don’t forget to move quickly to catch Matchesfashion and Michèle Lamy’s Eggs With Hun breakfasts at the Michmatch Cafe at 5 Carlos Place, where the fashion titans will be hosting delightful conversations and even better bites with artists Lisa Fox, Playton and David Hoyle.
TRENDS TO KNOW (and help you blag your way through an art party)
PERFORMANCE ART
Performance is a huge part of art right now; while it has a reputation for being stuffy this is (finally) changing. Grada Kilomba’s O Barco/The Boat has only been seen in Lisbon and then in New York and now comes to Somerset House.
DO SAY: When will this installation be activated?
DON’T SAY: Oooh, this is awkward.
HOMAGE TO THE CLASSICS
Conversations about art history have had us all looking to the past and we are revelling in remixing histories. Through a new filter, the classics are coming alive for a new generation.
DO SAY: I see 1576-1720 so differently now.
DON’T SAY: Painting is dead.
ISSUE-DRIVEN ART
The world is a mess right now and some artists are tackling issues such as human rights, global inequity, racism, homophobia, transphobia and political corruption head-on in multifaceted ways.
DO SAY: What motivated you to tackle this subject?
DON’T SAY: Isn’t this all a bit depressing?
THE INSTA MOMENTS
Did you even see it if you didn’t post on social? Art and Instagram were made for each other and Frieze Week offers a plethora of opportunities to secure top bragging rights. Here are the moments that are sure to go viral on the grid.
TEN YEARS OF: 1-54 CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN ART FAIR
Credited with bringing the best art from the African diaspora to London, 1-54 celebrates its 10th anniversary at Somerset House with a feast for the eyes, the soul… and the ’gram. Until 16 Oct (1-54.com)
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
Damien Hirst always ruffles some feathers and this Frieze is no different, as he sets fire to art from his first NFT collection worth £10m in The Currency. That’s hot. Until 30 Oct (newportstreetgallery.com)
A VISUAL EXTRAVAGANZA
The stunning Serafine1369 is bringing daily live dance, performance and a multi-channel video installation based on the idea of an exploded clock to Somerset House. Until 30 Oct
THE BLACK CHAPEL
As the season draws to a close the final performances at Theaster Gates’ Serpentine pavilion culminates with the delightful Corinne Bailey Rae and a rare show by Gates’ own band The Black Monks. Quite the Renaissance Man. 14-15 Oct
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
The edits are in, the cover art selected — here’s a trio of new art book releases getting the ES team fired up for Frieze
Parenthood — it’s quite frankly exhausting. But the motherhood penalty is given a new focus in Hettie Judah’s radical study How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and Other Parents), speaking to more than 50 artists, that is part polemic, part practical tool kit for the world’s leading art institutions.#
On the subject of a more egalitarian art world, which has always been the main shtick of Katy Hessel’s award-winning podcast The Great Women Artists, it comes as no surprise that she is following it up with a book. The Story of Art Without Men wrestles with thorny conversations on the inclusivity and erasure of women, people of colour and non-Western voices.
Familiar with Glenn Kitson? You should be. A Bolton-born artist and director, it’s Kitson’s cheeky Insta posts such as of Nicholas Lyndhurst (below), which marry images of British pop culture icons with some sassy alternative biog, that have been immortalised by Idea Books into a new coffee-table tome. Love-a-Likes will be available to buy for 24 hours only, and as part of a limited run. #Obsessed
