London’s art scene goes into hyperdrive every October, and this year promises to be no exception. From 9 October to the 13th, Frieze Week takes over London’s Regent’s Park, making it the centre of the art universe. For lovers of anything from centuries-old masters to cutting-edge contemporary art, these are two fairs not to miss. There is also Frieze Sculpture, which is FREE in the park to add to the buzz. Here’s everything you need to know about this massive art event and the collateral fallout around town.
Frieze London:
Frieze London represents an essential marketplace for modernity where the cream of contemporary galleries is assembled in a big tent in Regent’s Park. It is not another art fair; it is the defining factor making London an art destination. Up-and-coming artists are shown alongside the staple of the global art market, whose work may fetch eye-watering prices. Here, art collectors and galleries play the ultimate game of see and be seen.
Since its inception in 2003, Frieze has made mid-October the busiest time of the year in the London art calendar. Every significant gallery and museum will be in London to coincide with this week. The global art elite, from collectors to curators, are two a penny in the metro. It’s intense, chaotic and a lot of fun. If you plan on visiting, buckle up for an exhilarating ride. Remember to wear your trendiest, most comfortable outfit and shoes- the red carpet is as much a spectacle as the art.
Frieze Masters:
Where History Meets High Society For something more enduring, enter Frieze Masters. Launched in 2012, the sister fair occurs within Frieze London and features art created before 2000. It’s calmer, more elegant, and full of museum-quality art and artefacts. Frieze Masters offers a peek into the past through the lens of today’s high-end art market.
Frieze Sculpture:
Free Art for All. Don’t have the cash to splash out on pricey tickets? Frieze Sculpture is your answer. Fatos Uzbek has expertly curated this open-air sculpture trail. The exhibition scatters large-scale sculptures by international artists through Regent’s Park for a few months starting in September. This year’s lineup includes Leonora Carrington, Theaster Gates, Zanele Muholi, and Yoshitomo Nara. It’s great for casual walking and seeing world-class art without the price tag. No Dogs 🙁
Frieze Focus
‘Focus’ Returns to Champion Young Galleries at Frieze London 2024
The section features 34 solo and dual presentations from artists and galleries spanning five continents, including new spaces defining London’s cultural scene
Frieze’s longstanding section dedicated to fostering a community of young galleries is this year advised by Joumana Asseily (Founder, Marfa’), Piotr Drewko (Founder, Wschód), and Cédric Fauq (Chief Curator, CAPC musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux).
With a newly prominent placement right at the centre of the fair, Focus will feature numerous new spaces this year that define London’s vibrant young gallery scene, including Brunette Coleman presenting works by Nat Faulkner, Rose Easton with Eva Gold, Ginny on Frederick with Charlotte Edey, Harlesden High Street with Savannah Harris, Nicoletti with Divine Southgate-Smith, Public with Nils Alix-Tabeling, Soft Opening with Dean Sameshima, South Parade with Georgina Hill and Xxijra Hii with Hannah Morgan.
The ‘Conversations with Nature’ exhibition, showcasing Marcus Coates and Henrique Oliveira artworks, is on display within the Ruinart Art Bar at FRIEZE London from 10-13 October 2024. Each year, Ruinart welcomes renowned contemporary artists to pay tribute to the Maison’s legacy through their annual commission of Carte Blanche artworks. This year’s commission entitled ‘Conversations with Nature’ sees six artists explore the relationship between mankind and nature through their individual and unique prism using different mediums.
Two artists from the collective – Marcus Coates and Henrique Oliveira will showcase their work at Frieze London. While Marcus Coates creates new relationships with a “more than human” world, Henrique Oliveira combines plants and other organic elements to create spectacular sculptures.
As the Official Champagne of FRIEZE, Ruinart invites guests to explore the exhibition in the Ruinart Art Bar, where they can enjoy a glass of R de Ruinart, Ruinart Blanc de Blancs, or Ruinart Rosé.
Cultural Capital:
London-based Artists at Frieze London 2024. Discover experimental artists from near and far who have made London their home, including Alvaro Barrington, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Lucía Pizzani
Frieze Offsite:
FRIEZE NO.9 CORK STREET (9 Cork Street) is pleased to present its Frieze programme, welcoming a series of participating galleries from across the globe, including
East End Day and West End Night
Highlights of Frieze Week, return for 2024. Taking place on Sunday, 6 October in the East and Thursday, 10 October in the West, galleries and non-profits open to Frieze audiences, hosting special events and private views.
NB: Some galleries may require advance appointments. Please consult the galleries’ websites directly for further details.
East End Day: Sunday, 6 October, 11 am – 6 pm
The Frieze experience does not come cheap. You must be prepared to pay. Early bird tickets are long gone, but £145 for a single fair, or £245 for both, gets you in Thursday’s preview. But panic not: weekend tickets are more reasonable at £46 for one fair or £90 for both. VIP access begins on Wednesday, while it’s about that Saturday ticket for all the rest of us. Frieze London and Frieze Masters combine the most exciting, expensive, and experimental works under one roof. Whether buying, browsing, or just soaking it all in, this is the art event of the year you will want to attend.
Colateral Frieze Week Fairs 2024
Fairs: Here is a list of what’s on the outside of Regents Park during Frieze
7th-13th October Camden Town Hall
StART has relocated to an iconic new space in the world-renowned creative and technology hub, King’s Cross St Pancras, the vibrant district for innovative talent, now known simply as KX. St Pancras Square is the energetic home to the headquarters of industry-leading global giants, such as Google, LVMH and Facebook. It has firmly established itself as London’s most exciting location for progressive businesses.
8 -13 October 2024 Berkeley Square
Founded in 2007 by fourth-generation Parisian antique dealer Patrick Perrin, PAD London is the only fair in the UK dedicated to 20th-century and contemporary Design. The week-long event occurs every October on Berkeley Square, in the heart of London’s affluent Mayfair district. PAD London is the sister fair to PAD Paris, which was launched in 1998 and takes place every April in the Jardin des Tuileries.
A permanent fixture on the two capitals’capital’s vibrant art and design circuits, PAD fairs have become a byword for connoisseurship, exquisite taste, and curatorial flair. They showcase the world’s leading galleries’ best modern, contemporary, and Design. With their distinct approach to collecting, PAD fairs epitomise how artistic genres across time and periods interact to reveal astonishing combinations and create the most individual and striking interiors.
PAD fairs cultivate eclecticism, authenticity and connoisseurship with unparalleled passion and flair. Their refined setting is designed to inspire collectors, art consultants, museum curators, interior specialists, design practitioners and the public, making PAD the only event. From £30
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair London
10-13 October 2024 Somerset House
1-54 is the first and only international art fair dedicated to contemporary art in Africa and the diaspora.
With three editions per year—in London, New York and Marrakech—and an annual pop-up fair in Paris, 1-54 references the fifty-four countries that constitute the African continent.
Returning to the iconic, neoclassical building of Somerset House, located in the heart of the city and overlooking the River Thames, the fair will be held in the West, East, South and Embankment galleries. Once again, this twelfth edition of 1-54 London will coincide with Frieze London.
This year, more than 60 galleries have been carefully selected, showcasing the varied mediums and work of over 160 established and emerging artists from the continent and global diasporas. Special curated events and a rich VIP and Public programme will accompany the fair.
9-12 October 202 The Mall Galleries
Women in Art Fair returns to Mall Galleries this year to provide a prominent platform for women artists, gallerists and curators during Frieze, London’s significant annual art week.
10-13 October The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane
The Other Art Fair is a global gathering of creative thinkers, game changers and pleasure seekers sharing emerging talent and unforgettable experiences. Each of our fairs differs against the backdrop of the world’s world’s cities. We combine boundary-pushing yet always accessible artworks from over 100 independent artists with immersive installations, performances and a few curious encounters. The result is an inspiring, evocative, inclusive and fun event that reframes how art can be perceived and creates lasting connections between artists and art lovers. As the only global art event dedicated to representing independent artists since launching in 2011, The Other Art Fair has worked with over 3,000 artists from over 20 countries. It now hosts 11 fairs annually across the UK, US and Australia.
10-13 October 2024 Saatchi Gallery
FOCUS Art Fair is an international art fair offering diverse and rising artists a platform to bring their unique visions to life. Founded in 2017, the fair has hosted over 45 overseas exhibitions. The London fair will present a refreshing new showcase of sustainability, equality, and innovation.
Recommended Galleries and extras
Nicola L.: I Am The Last Woman Object
Camden Art Centre 4 October – 29 December 2024
Camden Art Centre is proud to present the first major institutional exhibition in the UK of the work of celebrated French artist Nicola L. This will be the first time the full breadth of her work has been shown in the UK, providing an opportunity to experience her extraordinary work across sculpture, film, performance, painting and installation. In the work of Nicola L., the boundaries between body, space, functionality and art blur and converge. Furniture is endowed with an anthropomorphic quality, calling into question the objectification, sexualisation, and treatment of the feminine form. Divorced from its whole, the body is experienced in enlarged, absurdly proportioned fragments whose functionality materialises the domestic role many women were relegated to. camdenartcentre.org
Jack O’Brien: The Reward Camden Art Centre 4 October – 29 December 2024
As the 2023 recipient of Camden Art Centre’s Emerging Artist Prize at Frieze, London-based artist Jack O’Brien presents a significant new commission in Camden’s Gallery Three. O’Brien’s winning presentation at Frieze was anchored by a large site-specific sculpture, Volent, a historical English horse-racing carriage wrapped in a skin of industrial polythene atop a mustard yellow carpet. For O’Brien, objects are “eloquent texts” that encode cultural and historical meaning, and his work often explores the erotics of restraint, transforming objects anthropomorphically, forcing them into a state of submissive abstraction.camdenartcentre.org
Sammy Baloji Goldsmiths CCA 4 October 2024 – 12 January 2025
Sammy Baloji will present three interconnected chapters on climate, tropical architecture and extractivism in the Congo in his most significant scale solo exhibition in a UK institution. Born in the Katanga region, Baloji’s work explores the impact of Belgian settler colonialism on local culture, architecture, industry and urban Design, examining how these continue functioning as infrastructures of colonialism and contributors to climate change. In a new work commissioned for this exhibition, Baloji dissects the Belgian Art Nouveau movement, also known as ‘Style Congo’. Exposing how this movement co-opted Congolese motifs and materials, he uses it as an analogy for how natural resources – like copper and uranium – were extracted by Belgium to fuel capitalist economic growth. The show will also include a new commission bringing together research into forgotten photography, recent works exploring the mining of Congolese uranium to supply the Manhattan Project, the attendant neo-colonial impact of the Cold War, and the colonial devastation wrought on the rainforest, and the region’s central role as an actor in our collective climactic future.
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998
Barbican Art Gallery 5 October 2024 – 5 January 2025
This is the world’s first exhibition to explore and chart a period of significant cultural and political change in India through the work of 30 artists. Featuring nearly 150 works of art across painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and film, this landmark group show examines how Indian artists have distilled significant episodes of the late 20th Century and reflected intimate moments of life during this time. A specially curated film season, Rewriting the Rules: Pioneering Indian Cinema after 1970, will run alongside the exhibition. barbican.org.uk
The first major UK exhibition of American artist Mike Kelley
03 October 2024 – 09 March 2025 Monday to Sunday 10.00–18.00 Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
27 September 2024 – 09 March 2025
Current Exhibition Wes Lang: The Black Paintings
Moco Masters celebrates the enduring legacies of artists within our modern and contemporary art history. From Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst, this exhibition weaves together a vibrant tapestry of artistic journeys across time and how they revolutionised art forever.
The Healing Frequency exhibition by Marina Abramović will not be available during this time. Visitors can enjoy the fantastic exhibitions of the Moco Masters, Moco Contemporary, and Digital & Immersive Art.
Dorchester Collection’s 45 Park Lane recently launched Albert Irvin OBE. With Frieze London taking place from Wednesday, 9 October to Sunday, 13 October 2024, 45 Park Lane offers a unique opportunity for visitors to step away from the fair and immerse themselves in fine art in a relaxed, non-gallery setting. The exhibition spans the hotel’s lobby and Bar 45, where guests can enjoy a cocktail surrounded by Irvin’s dynamic work.
Daria Blum will be unveiling her new body of work, Daria Blum: Drip Drip Point Warp Spin Buckle Rot, in a month-long exhibition at the John-Pawson-designed Claridge’s ArtSpace in the heart of Mayfair, London.
Blum, a Swiss multimedia artist based in London, is the inaugural recipient of the prestigious Claridge’s Royal Academy Schools Art Prize. She is celebrated for her innovative approach to performance, multimedia, and conceptual art.
Fashion Designer Paul Smith is opening a new exhibition space on Albemarle Street in time for Frieze Week. Since the company’s inception in the early 1970s, Paul Smith’s shops have taken a pioneering approach to their use of space, blurring the line between a traditional retail location and an arts venue by displaying pieces from Sir Paul’s collection alongside the brand’s offering of sophisticated tailoring, casualwear and accessories. An inveterate collector and natural curator, Sir Paul is forever on the lookout for artwork, antiques, furniture and other curiosities which speak to him, and he is eager to share his unique taste with his customers, incorporating items from his extensive archive into the design and layout of each Paul Smith shop.
Auctions
Sotheby’s London: Contemporary Evening Auction 9 October 2024•19:00 BST
Sotheby’s Contemporary Day Auction •London Live Auction: 10 October 2024•12:00 BST
Christie’s London Evening Sale: 9 OCT 5 PM BST | LIVE AUCTION 22682 20th / 21st Century
Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale 10 OCT 3PM BST | LIVE AUCTION 22683
Phillips London:
Phillips: Evening & Day Sales | Contemporary Art Auction
Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale Auction: 10th October 2024, 5pm BST
Recommended London Gallery Exhibitions View Here
DEFROST: October Gallery presents LR Vandy and
Kenji Yoshida at Honey & Smoke
Tuesday, 24th September – 2nd November, 2024
Honey & Smoke Grill House,
216 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 5QW
In celebration of Frieze Week, October Gallery is delighted to continue collaborating with Honey & Smoke Grill House with an exhibition of striking works by LR Vandy and Kenji Yoshida. Located on Great Portland Street, just moments from Frieze art fair in Regent’s Park, the restaurant will feature a Defrost menu inspired by the exhibition, blending cultural traditions and contemporary flavours in food and art.
Cardi Gallery is exhibiting new paintings by Turin-born, New York-based artist Davide Balliano. This is his second solo exhibition with the gallery and his first major presentation in London. Balliano’s unique brand of geometric abstraction has developed over the last several years. Evolving from the artist’s signature two-tone palette, this exhibition also marks the reintroduction of colour in his paintings after over a decade.
CARDI GALLERY | LONDON 22 Grafton Street W1S 4EX – London – UK
Marlene Dumas – Mourning Marsyas
The paintings in this show are created through a mixture of chance and intention, mostly evolving in a dance through time, combining very fast and focused actions with reflective pauses. Here, Dumas’s style as well as subjects move between being in and out of control. We encounter neither portraits nor observations, but images of feelings and moods. The tone is one of mourning, of the desperation of displacement, and of grief both personal and universal.
20 SEP – 16 NOV 2024 Frith Street Gallery
More to Come