On 11 October, Frieze London 2023 opened its doors, celebrating its 20th anniversary with a record-breaking number of galleries from around the world. This year’s fair is bigger and better than ever, with over 160 galleries from 46 countries showcasing a wide range of artists, including renowned names such as El Anatsui, Frans Hals, and Ai Weiwei. Running from October 11 to 15, the fair extends beyond its Regent’s Park epicenter, offering a vibrant program of events and exhibitions across the city, including the generously curated Frieze Masters, a showcase of works from recent centuries.
And what about the other spaces in London? The city is alive and kicking, and the cultural life is on the rise. We’ve put together a guide to the various events you can attend during your breaks from Frieze while you’re in London.
Marina Abramović
23 September 2023 – 1 January 2024
Royal Academy of Arts, Main Galleries, Burlington House, Piccadilly
An art world icon and a performance art pioneer – Marina Abramović has captivated audiences by pushing the limits of her body and mind, for the past 50 years.
This major exhibition presents key moments from Abramović’s career through sculpture, video, installation and performance. Works such as The Artist is Present will be strikingly re-staged through archive footage while others will be rediscovered by the next generation of performance artists, trained in the Marina Abramović method. Different works will be reperformed during the exhibition, so no two visits will be the same.
Find more information about visiting the Royal Academy of Arts website.
Serpentine Pavilion 2023 by Lina Ghotmeh
9 June – 29 October 2023
Kensington Gardens
The design of the Serpentine Pavilion 2023 emerges from architect Lina Ghotmeh’s aspiration to develop humans’ primal relationship with the Earth into a sustainable one.
The Pavilion is titled À table, a French invitation to sit down together at a table and engage in an open dialogue while sharing a meal. The interior space of the pavilion is defined by the large table that encircles the perimeter, offering an opportunity for conviviality and the sharing of ideas, concerns, joys, and traditions. The 300-square-meter structure, inspired by the architect’s Mediterranean heritage, is designed to be lightweight and fully demountable to ensure a minimal carbon footprint.
More details about the Pavilion you will find on the Serpentine website.
Third World: The Bottom Dimension
23 June – 22 October 2023
Serpentine North, Kensington Gardens
Third World: The Bottom Dimension is a multi-part project conceptualised by artist Gabriel Massan in collaboration with invited artists Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar, and vocalist and music producer LYZZA. When united, their work explores Black Brazilian experience as it intersects with the impacts of colonialism.
Through the lenses of decolonization, queerness and decentralisation (technological, social, economic, and ideological), Third World: The Bottom Dimension challenges us to rethink the ways in which we understand and orient ourselves in the world. Launching in June 2023, the project has three components: a free-to-download video game, an exhibition at Serpentine North and web3 tokens, built on the Tezos blockchain, which bring together Massan, their collaborators and a wider web3 community.
Powered by Tezos
Photography by HUGO GLENDINNING
Atta Kwami: Maria Lassnig Prize Mural
6 September 2022 – 30 April 2024
Serpentine North Garden, W Carriage Dr
With a career spanning 40 years, Atta Kwami’s practice brought together painting, architecture, sculpture, and education. Kwami lived primarily in Kumasi and later in Loughborough, UK, keeping a studio in both cities and drawing inspiration for his paintings from both global and local art histories and traditions. His compositions of geometric strips, stripes and grids particularly connect to Northern Ghanaian wall and house painting, street vendor kiosks, commercial sign painting, woven textiles, Ghanaian music, and jazz. Designed in dialogue with the North Gallery Garden, the mural Dzidzɔ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace), 2021-22, embodies the artist’s vibrant palette and fluid abstract painting style.
Find out more on the Serpentine website.
Every Singer Free Fall
10 October – 22 December 2023
Hauser & Wirth, London, 23 Savile Row
With Free Fall, her first solo exhibition in the UK, American artist Avery Singer reflects upon her personal experience of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and explores the wider societal impact of collective trauma and proliferating image culture and media dissemination. Based entirely upon Singer’s childhood memories, the works and architectural intervention in Free Fall are a testament to the power of memory—and a memorial to a moment of terror and survival.
More details about the exhibition you will find on Hauser & Wirth website.
Richard Prince. Early Photography, 1977–87
October 5–December 22, 2023
Gagosian Gallery, 20 Grosvenor Hill
Gagosian presents two exhibitions of Richard Prince’s work in London: Early Photography, 1977-87 at Grosvenor Hill Galleries and The Entertainers at Davies Street Galleries. Prince’s groundbreaking venture into “rephotography” in the late 70s and 80s carved out a niche in the art world. This exhibition features over eighty of these pioneering works, including the acclaimed cowboy, girlfriend and advertising photographs. Intriguingly, a number of pieces will be making their first appearance in London.
Richard Prince. The Entertainers
October 5–November 16, 2023
Gagosian Gallery, 17-19 Davies Street
Gagosian presents two exhibitions by Richard Prince in London, Early Photography, 1977–87 at the Grosvenor Hill gallery and the second one is The Entertainers at the Davies Street gallery. The Entertainers series (1982–83), is a rarely seen set of manipulated photographs taken in the bars, clubs, and restaurants of New York’s Times Square that captures the location’s sleazy glamour, and the gallery at Grosvenor Hill features works from several other series.
Many of the works reveal a fascination with the photographic medium as a tool for categorization and cataloging that exhibits a sociological and anthropological slant: Untitled (Three Women Looking in the Same Direction) (1980) assembles its subjects purely according to the attitude of their heads; Criminals and Celebrities (1986) groups images of the famous and the infamous in the act of attempting to shield themselves from the camera’s intrusive gaze; and Untitled (Fainted) (1980) gathers four stills of unconscious women.
Find more information about visiting the Gagosian website.
Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto
Until 25 February 2024
V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road
The first UK exhibition dedicated to the work of French couturière, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, charting the establishment of the House of CHANEL and the evolution of her iconic design style which continues to influence the way women dress today.
Featuring over 180 looks, seen together for the first time, as well as jewelry, accessories, cosmetics, and perfumes, the exhibition will explore Chanel’s pioneering approach to fashion design, which paved the way for a new feminine elegance and continues to influence the way women dress today. Based upon the Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto exhibition organized by the Palais Galliera, Fashion Museum of the City of Paris, the exhibition will be reimagined for the V&A and feature rarely seen pieces from the V&A’s collection, alongside looks from Palais Galliera and the Patrimoine de CHANEL, the heritage collections of the fashion House in Paris. Key pieces on display will include outfits created for British model Anne Gunning (later Lady Nutting) and Hollywood stars Lauren Bacall and Marlene Dietrich.
Tickets are currently sold out, but there are many related events available to attend, find out more on the V&A website. Become a V&A Member to see the exhibition without booking in advance.
They departed for their own country another way (a 9x9x9 hauntology)
15 September – 5 November 2023
White Cube Bermondsey, 144-152 Bermondsey Street
Julie Mehretu’s solo exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey, They departed for their own country another way (a 9x9x9 hauntology), debuts three new series of paintings consisting of nine works each. Presented alongside these works, in the 9x9x9 gallery Mehretu has paired her title track painting with a sculpture by visual artist Nairy Baghramian, in response to an ongoing dialogue between the two artists.
The title of the show draws from the biblical verse Matthew 2:12, wherein God imparts a message to the Magi through a dream cautioning them against the duplicity of King Herod, so that they return from paying homage to the infant Jesus as altered human beings.
More details about the exhibition you will find on the White Cube website.
Jenufa II, 1983
Courtesy of the artist
Paula Rego: Letting Loose
22 September – 11 November 2023
Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road
Victoria Miro presents an exhibition of works by Paula Rego from the 1980s, a period of liberation and self-discovery that led to great breakthroughs for the artist and saw her first major exhibitions in the UK and the US.
For Paula Rego, the 1980s was a decade of creative transformation. She began to explore her childhood passion for painting as a game, moving away from the process of making collages – drawing and painting materials that she then cut up and arranged into elaborate figurative puzzles. She used freedom as a methodology to invent a cast of people, animals and hybrids who would enable her to tell her tale.
Accompanying the exhibition is a new publication featuring Becoming Animal, an essay by Cecilia Alemani.
Urs Fischer: Flea Circus
07 October – 18 November 2023
Sadie Coles HQ, 8 Bury Street
Sadie Coles HQ presents a new exhibition by Urs Fischer, Flea Circus, which includes a new body of work that is modest in scale and predominantly analogue in its production. In a low-fi darkroom in his studio, small paintings are coated with exposure emulsion to receive layer upon layer of photographic images. The result is a surprising unpredictability for both the artist and the viewer.
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine
11 October 2023 – 7 January 2024
Southbank Centre, Hayward Gallery, Belvedere Road
Over the past 50 years, Hiroshi Sugimoto has created imagery that is meticulous, deeply contemplative, and quietly subversive.
This exhibition brings together key works from all of Sugimoto’s major photographic ranges, highlighting his philosophic and playful investigation into our understanding of time and memory, and photography’s ability to both document and create. A native of Tokyo, Japan, Hiroshi Sugimoto divides his time between Tokyo and New York City. Over the past five decades, his photographs have gained international acclaim and exhibited in major institutions worldwide.
Peter Grimes
04 October – 11 October 2023
London Coliseum stage, St. Martin’s Lane, Charing Cross
The young student working with Peter Grimes has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The townspeople begin to doubt the Fisherman’s intentions, and soon a sinister chain of events is set in motion. Rumours turn to suspicion, and suspicion turns to direct accusation. The villagers unite – with devastating results – to confront Grimes.
Peter Grimes is an elegantly simple story, part psychological thriller, part morality play, written by Benjamin Britten.
More details about the opera you will find on the website.
The Coronation of Poppea
13 October – 14 November 2023
With music and characterization that still feels strikingly modern, Monteverdi’s darkly entertaining depiction of violence and intrigue at the court of the Emperor Nero was one of the first operatic masterpieces.
Robin Norton-Hale directs this new production, with multi-genre musician and composer Yshani Perinpanayagam as conductor and arranger, as well as acquiring a new English translation of the libretto from poet and classicist Helen Eastman.
More details about the opera you will find on the website.
