Frieze week is here! As anticipation grows for the fairs opening, Saffron Swire is here to help us schedule our days spent outside of the tent.
Frieze London is the art world’s Mecca. Every year, as Autumn’s copper and crimson shades transform Regent’s Park, collectors, gallerists, and art enthusiasts make their annual seven-day pilgrimage to the city. This year, Frieze London and Frieze Masters will host 270 galleries from 47 countries, cementing its place as the capital’s art event of the year. It’s a chance to celebrate artistic innovation and catch a mix of fledgling talent alongside some of the industry’s most lauded names – and, of course, to shamelessly people-watch those that saunter to and fro.
While Frieze London and Frieze Masters will be a hive of activity this week, it’s worth knowing that there is also a slate of fantastic art exhibitions on outside of the Frieze tent. So, to arm you with all the goings-on outside of Regent’s Park, we have compiled a selection of the must-see exhibitions, retrospectives and shows running in parallel with Frieze’s eclectic programme.
Lygia Clark and Sonia Boyce, Whitechapel Gallery (through January 12, 2025)
An Awkward Relation is a new exhibition by Sonia Boyce, specially curated to be a conversation with the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988) and her show, The I and the You. Although separated by time and geography, both exhibitions explore pivotal moments in the artists’ careers, where each began experimenting with participatory practices. While Clark and Boyce worked in different cultural and political contexts, both shared a deep interest in exploring and shifting the relationship between artists, artworks and audiences. The exhibit explores themes of influence, communication, and synergy across divides. The works on display include a series exploring Boyce’s fascination with hair as a material and cultural signifier. In pairing these artists together for a dialogue, audiences are invited to become active participants and reflect on the similarities and differences in their approaches.
Mike Kelley: ‘Ghost and Spirit’, Tate Modern (through March 9, 2025)
This Autumn, Tate Modern presents the first major UK survey of American artist Mike Kelley (1954-2012), revered for his radical and experimental ‘dark pop art.’ Traversing his career from the late 1970s to 2012, the exhibition will highlight Kelley’s provocative work in drawings, performances, multimedia installations, and sculptures that challenge class relations and social structures. Drawing from underground culture and philosophy, his pieces explore memory, identity and the systems that shape belief and power. Critical works on display include More Love Hours That Can Ever Be Repaid (1995), which incorporates second-hand toys to critique gender roles; the monumental Educational Complex (1995), a model of every school he attended; and the Kandors series (1999-2011), illuminated models of Superman’s lost home, reflecting Kelley’s deep exploration of repressed desire and the psychological layers of American popular culture. Traversing his entire career, Ghost and Spirit will offer audiences a rare chance to step underground and into his haunting, provocative and imaginary world.
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers (through January 19, 2025)
“Unmissable”, “heartbreaking”, and “dazzling” are just a few of the words used to describe the widely acclaimed Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers exhibit at the National Gallery. The ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ show – which has received five stars across the board – is a riotous symphony of poetic colour and texture, featuring important and rarely seen masterpieces that highlight Van Gogh’s final years in southern France. The exhibition not only coincides with the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery, but it also marks the centenary of the Gallery’s acquisition of the artist’s Sunflowers and Van Gogh’s Chair (1888) in 1924. The exhibition is the first to focus on Van Gogh’s imaginative transformations and features 47 paintings and 14 drawings from private collections worldwide. The exhibit not only offers a deep insight into Van Gogh’s artistic development but it also has an undeniable visceral impact; seeing the works hung together will evoke a whole gamut of emotions.
Mire Lee at Tate Modern (through March 16, 2025)
Since the Tate Modern opened at the dawn of the millennium, the Turbine Hall has played host to some of the world’s most memorable and acclaimed works of contemporary art. The annual Hyundai Commission allows artists to create new works for an audience of millions, and this year’s choice is the South Korean artist Mire Lee. Lee – who lives and works between Amsterdam and Seoul – is revered for using kinetic, mechanised elements to explore the tension between soft forms and rigid systems. The artist uses industrial materials such as steel rods, cement and clay to explore the animated nature of these materials as they pour, drip and bulge. Her atmospheric sculptures and installations are designed to engage the senses and create spaces to reflect on themes of emotion and human desire. Her new site-specific work for the Turbine Hall will be the first major presentation of Lee’s work in the UK, and she is set to transform the Hall with her subversive, multi-sensory forms.
Michael Craig-Martin at the RA (through December 10, 2024)
The Irish-born conceptual artist and ‘YBA guru’ Michael Craig-Martin has filled the galleries of the Royal Academy with colour for an “inescapably joyful” retrospective of his 60-year career. Since rising to prominence in the late 1960s and as a teacher to the likes of Damien Hirst, Craig-Martin has hovered between sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, prints and digital works. The retrospective features over 120 works of Craig-Martin’s that fuse pop, minimalism and conceptual art while tracing his style’s evolution from near-monochrome to vivid colour. Works on display include his early experimental sculptures, landmark works such as ‘An Oak Tree’ (1973), a dramatic site-specific installation and a new immersive digital work surrounding visitors with the artist’s colourful motifs.
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998, Barbican Art Gallery (through January 5, 2025).
The first exhibition to cover these epoch-making years in India, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998, will feature artwork by over 30 Indian artists bookended by two transformative events in the country’s history: Gandhi’s declaration of a state of emergency in 1975 and the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998. This tricky period between these years was blighted with intense socio-economic and cultural change in India. Still, within this chaos, ordinary life chugged on, and artists created works that responded to these events. Across a range of media, these works on show at the Barbican Art Gallery – which revolve around themes of friendship, love, desire, religion, community and protest – are deeply intimate documents from a period of monumental change. Works on display include Sunil Gupta’s photographic record of the precariousness of gay public identity in New Delhi; Nilima Sheikh (featured in Studio at Frieze Masters) thangka paintings; and a video installation by Nalani Malani about the impact of India’s nuclear testing.
Francis Bacon Portraits, National Portrait Gallery (through January 19, 2025)
Francis Bacon Portraits is a new major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and the first exhibit in nearly two decades to hone in on the artist’s portraits. The exhibition will feature more than 50 paintings by Bacon spanning his career from the late 1940s onwards, exploring his deep engagement with portraiture and how he broke from traditional definitions of the genre. The exhibition will be divided thematically into five phases: Portraits Emerge, Beyond Appearance, Painting from the Masters, Self Portraits, and Friends and Lovers (including friends like Lucian Freud and Isabel Rawthorne to his lovers Peter Lacy and George Dyer). There will also be rarely-seen photographs and portraits of Bacon himself on display, captured by renowned 20th-century photographers such as Cecil Beaton. From his responses to portraiture by earlier artists such as Rembrandt to large-scale paintings memorialising lost lovers, several of his greatest works have been drawn from private and public collections. Together, they will no doubt reveal Bacon’s uncanny ability to see darkness in others and how he used portraiture to expose the vulnerability and existential angst that permeates lives.
Written by Saffron Swire
