Michael Armitage, Dandora (Xala Musicians), 2022
(Picture: The artist, photo © White Cube, (David Westwood))The London art world’s biggest week of the year is nearly upon us – Frieze week, so named for the international art fair that takes over a big chunk of Regent’s Park, is the chance for the city’s galleries to make major sales in their home city, and many will be hoping fervently that the strong dollar is going to bring back the big American bucks that have been rather lacking in recent years.
But with general admission weekend tickets starting at £48, a visit to the fair is beyond most average, art-loving punters. Fortunately, with so many big collectors in town, all the city’s commercial galleries are putting their best foot forward, and their shows will be the best they can muster. And, big plus, they’re free to visit. So here are the shows offering at least some of the best of Frieze, for free.
Magali Reus: X I I
New sculptures from the Dutch-born, London-based artist borrow from commonplace objects, scaling-up tape measures and baby formula packets to form still-lifes and exploring the ubiquitous fruit bowl in photography (nicely timed to coincide with Tate’s show by the king of the fruit bowl, Cezanne).
The Approach, to October 16; theapproach.co.uk
Georgia Gardner Gray: NDE
These new works from the American, Berlin-based artist (in her first solo UK show) span painting, sculpture and theatre and refer to the phenomenon of a ‘near death experience’, bringing the supernatural alongside the everyday, probing our system of belief and meaning. Two performances of her accompanying 45-minute play, NDE, with take place at the gallery during Frieze week.
Sadie Coles HQ Davies Street, to October 22; performances October 10, 6pm and October 11, 12pm; sadiecoles.com
Carolee Schneeman: 1955-1959
This show coincides with the late artist’s Barbican’s major public survey exhibition, Body Politic. It clearly has a much more limited focus - just four years - but it brings together significant nude figurative paintings and an early body of drawingsmade at a critical period and demonstrating the importance of the act of drawing to a pioneering feminist artist who always, first and foremost, thought herself a painter.
Hales Gallery, to October 29; halesgallery.com
Gabriele Beveridge: Packed Stars Dividing
Weight and weightlessness, fragility and strength combine in Gabriele Beveridge’s gorgeously alluring glass works, continuing her practice using materials from sites of commerce where we primp and prepare our bodies (usually paying someone to do it for us). Touch/don’t touch, look/judge/buy - it’s all there.
Seventeen Gallery, to October 29; seventeengallery.com
Ella Littwitz: If everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place
Our objectively ridiculous relationship with the earth we live on is broadly - but subtly - the subject of Ella Littwitz’s second exhibition with the south London gallery, which takes seemingly innocuous items, such as as plants and rocks, buoys, barrels and markers which are highly meaningful and often divisive in the hands of humans concerned with territory.
Copperfield, to October 29; copperfieldgallery.com
Andra Ursuţa: Joy Revision
The Romanian-born, New York–based artist’s new photograms and lead-crystal sculptures stem from a premodern conception of art as an essential tool to deal with mortality, loss, and grief, and pretty creepy (while at the same time beautiful) they are too.
David Zwirner, to October 29; davidzwirner.com
Olga de Amaral
Stunning textile works from the renowned Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, in her first solo London show for nearly a decade. Her cascading, layered textiles and clouds of hanging strands tip over into painting, sculpture and installation, proof, if it were needed, that fabric art is fine art.
Lisson Gallery, to October 29; lissongallery.com
Michael Armitage: Amongst the living, with Seyni Awa Camara
The Kenyan-born painter returns with a new series of recent paintings and works on paper produced during the past three years in London and Nairobi, shown alongside terracotta sculptures by the Senegalese artist Seyni Awa Camara, whose work he has admired for many years.
White Cube Bermondsey, to October 30; whitecube.com
Olivia Plender: Our Bodies are Not the Problem
Plender’s latest series of artworks grew out of research into Sylvia Pankhurst, alongside the current concerns of feminist organisers in East London and takes as its starting point Pankhurst’s play Liberty or Death (c. 1913) in the archives of the Women’s Library in London. The show comprises a sound piece, posters, drawings, a wall painting and a publication, alongside a new videoHold Hold Fire, which will be screened at the ICA on October 15.
Maureen Paley, to October 30; maureenpaley.com
Caroline Coon: Love of Place
The West London artist brings together a selection of her crisp, bright urban landscapes - scenes of everyday life in her area, roadways, social housing, canals and shoppers - made over the past 25 years and reflecting the city’s duality as a place full of life with a darker underbelly.
Stephen Friedman, to November 5; stephenfriedman.com
Nancy Spero: Dancers and Goddesses
Frankly I think the title ought to be enough to recommend it. This exhibition of work by the American artist and activist focuses on the productive period between 1984–96, showing the dynamic range of Spero’s ‘pantheon’ of figures, including athletes, mourners, dancers and goddesses - after she had rejected paint on canvas as “too heroic”.
Frith Street Gallery, to November 5; frithstreetgallery.com
Joan Nelson
If you enjoyed the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s current M.K. Ciurlionis exhibition (heavy on symbolist landscapes), but felt it may have taken itself just a mite seriously, you’ll enjoy Joan Nelson’s first solo UK show of paintings, which has something of that mystical feel, but with a playful undercurrent of subversion.
Herald St | Museum St, to November 5; heraldst.com
William Kentridge: Oh to Believe in Another World
Timed to coincide with the Royal Academy’s fantastic show by the South African artist, this smaller exhibition is the first by Kentridge in the London outpost of the Cape Town gallery, which has represented him for 30 years. It premieres the artist’s latest major work, an immersive five-channel projection made in response to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10, referencing utopia, our wish for it and the shadow it always casts.
Goodman Gallery, to November 12; goodmangallery.com
Tyler Mitchell: Chrysalis
Best known for his Vogue cover of Beyonce, the young US photographer Tyler Mitchell calls his thoughtful, beautiful images of black life a “Black utopic vision”. The artist’s first exhibition in London comprises recent images of young black people “in idyllic states of leisure and repose, safe and unencumbered by social expectations”.
Gagosian, to November 12; gagosian.com
Alice Neel: There’s Still Another I See
The first of its kind, this show focuses on pairings of paintings by the brilliant American painter of the same sitter – friends, lovers, family members – some completed only a year or two apart, some decades apart, from the 1930s to the 1980s. It charts physical transformations over time, changes of mood, temperature or temperament – in sitter and artist – along with developments in Neel’s art.
Victoria Miro, October 11 to November 12; victoria-miro.com
Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, ‘Ahete ha yamaki rariprou’ (when we are close we all scream together)
Fabulously evocative, bold drawings from Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, an indigenous artist from the headwaters of the Orinoco river deep in the Amazon forest. In his first solo exhibition in the UK, we see a priceless archive of Yanomami visual culture, knowledge and collective history, and their relationship with the jungle that holds them as a people.
Cecilia Brunson Projects, to November 18; ceciliabrunsonprojects.com
Sonia Boyce: Just for the Record
The inaugural show at her new gallery for Sonia Boyce, who recently not only represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, but only went and won the bloody Golden Lion for her presentation in the British Pavilion. She’s been around for ever and it’s brilliant to see this key figure of the Black Arts Movement get the recognition she deserves.
Simon Lee, October 12 to December 16; simonleegallery.com
Cecily Brown: Studio Pictures
Having spent the last few years making ever-bigger work, the British painter and Turner Prize-winner has returned to her roots with a collection of exquisite smaller paintings. Less gestural, more gentle, equally beautiful. Not to be missed.
Thomas Dane, October 11 to December 17; thomasdanegallery.com
Amy Sherald
Known here chiefly for her official painting of First Lady Michelle Obama, Amy Sherald is one of America’s foremost portrait artists, celebrated for her striking images of black people at leisure, bringing a hitherto largely ignored group into the grand history of social portraiture. This will be her first solo exhibition in Europe.
