The ultimate guide to Frieze London 2024
Frieze Week is the biggest event in the contemporary arts calendar, lashing the arts scene into a frenzy as it descends on London.
Regardless of whether this is your first art fair, or you are a hardened contemporary arts culture-vulture, it can be hard to navigate the four-day event; as well as the main attraction at Regent's Park, there are numerous satellite events and exhibitions to see and explore.
If you're struggling to curate a selection of Frieze highlights, then fear not; Harper's Bazaar's new contributing editor Katy Hessel, the founder of The Great Women Artists Instagram account, and author of The Story of Art Without Men, has compiled her recommendations for what to see.
The ultimate guide to Frieze 2024
While the main hub of Frieze lies in the centre of Regent’s Park, there’s also a vast and varied amount going on across the city, from landmark museum exhibitions that showcase India on a British stage, to a smaller group exhibition that celebrates the 100th year of Surrealism. This is my on-and-offsite guide to Frieze London.
Turner Prize at Tate Britain
The Turner Prize is back for its 40th year. Showing at Tate Britain are Claudette Johnson’s sensitive and mesmerising drawings. Some are entirely covered in pastel or painting, but it's the ones less covered that feel more powerful, leaving empty spaces for us to think about and where a single line can appear more powerful. A founding member of the 1980s BLK Group, Johnson has said of her work: “I’m interested in our humanity, our feelings and our politics; some things which have been neglected.”
Also up for the prize is Jasleen Kaur, whose installations place everyday objects within an immersive sonic environment to explore their historical and cultural resonances. And Delaine Le Bas, whose monumental immersive environments draw on her Romani heritage and themes of belonging, marginalisation, and renewal, to shed light on untold histories.
Marlene Dumas at Frith Street Gallery
The Amsterdam-based, South African-born painter is hailed for her raw, emotive paintings of figures that are ghoulish, washy, swollen and mortal. Full of emotion and psychological heaviness, the subjects feel bruised as they sink deep into her fluid and stained lines.
This show feels especially timely, with titles such as War and Ceasefire – as Dumas says herself: “[the paintings] are heavy with the weight of a bad conscience, deceased loves, past failures and present atrocities.” In this show and throughout her career, Dumas gets us to face the melancholy and grief of contemporary society.
Es Devlin's Congregation at St Mary le Strand
Curated by Ekow Eshun, Congregation by Es Devlin culminates 50 large-scale portraits of Londoners who have experienced forced displacement from their homelands. Projected onto the neoclassical walls of St Mary le Strand, the collective work is fully immersive, with choral music performed each evening at 7pm, from 3–9 October.
Tracey Emin at White Cube Bermondsey
“I follow you to the end” is Emin's rawest show yet. Energy radiates off her equally powerful and vulnerable painterly lines amidst text and washes of reds, blues and pinks. Mostly centred around the bed, these paintings show a very intimate portrayal of our private worlds, both in our internal minds, and physically in person.
Speaking about these works, Emin has said: “I was thinking about when you really believe in something or someone, and you will do anything for them, you will follow them to the complete end, and that's what I felt I'd done. And by following something or someone to the end, I realised it was the end, because I knew where the end was.”
Yayoi Kusama at Victoria Miro
Kusama’s dizzying Infinity Mirror Rooms feel like the closest thing to transporting you out of our real world, and into the land of her astonishing visions. Alongside a glittering and reflective new mirror room, illuminated in kaleidoscopic colours, are new paintings and towering soft sculptures that play on the artist’s everlasting interest in the polka-dot.
Surrealism at LGDR
With October 2024 marking exactly 100 years since the publication of the Surrealism Manifesto, galleries across the globe are shedding light on this pioneering and radical movement. (For anyone headed to Basel Paris, don’t miss Surréalisme at the Pompidou.)
But in London, Levy Gorvy Dayan is presenting Enchanted Alchemies, an exhibition of works that draw on magic and alchemy by Gertrude Abercrombie, Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington (who you’ll find more of at Frieze Sculpture), Ithell Colquhoun, Leonor Fini, and Monica Sjöö, in dialogue with Bharti Kher, Linder and more. An unmissable opportunity to see these gems up close.
The Imaginary Institution of India Art 1975–1998 at the Barbican
A landmark exhibition that brings together art – from painting to sculpture and installation – made during a pivotal time of political and social change in India. I am especially excited to see the blazing hues that make up mythical landscapes by the legendary Indian artist Madhvi Parekh, and the sculptor Sheila Gowda’s textile-based structures.
Lygia Clark at Alison Jacques
This show focuses on the creative output of Clark – a key figure in the Brazilian Neo-concrete movement which championed a greater focus on sensorial expression in art, and prioritised the viewer's active engagement – from the mid-1950s to early 1970s.
Excitingly, the show includes an example of her renowned ‘Bichos’; intimate, freestanding metal constructions connected by hinges, which, when handled by the viewer can form an infinite number of animalistic forms.
Also, don’t miss her exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, co-curated by the pioneering artist Sonia Boyce.
Magdalene Odundo at Thomas Dane
The legendary potter is back in London, marking her first solo exhibition in the city after two decades, following her acclaimed exhibition at Houghton Hall.
Odundo's ceramic language, which melds an inventiveness while also being steeped in history, exudes a bodily elegance and serenity. As she once told me, of her love of clay, “it's a material that has an expansiveness that all other materials don't have. It has all sorts of facets, from being dust that can be made into a lump of clay. And from that lump of clay, you can mould something. After it's fired, it becomes this object that has almost eternity. It lives on forever and ever. It's fragile, too, because pots can crack and can break, but they still exist."
The George Pop Up at Frieze
The esteemed private members' club brings its celebrated blend of art, culture and culinary excellence to Frieze London this year with its inaugural external pop-up. Designed to echo the Mount Street establishment’s unique atmosphere and reflect the Birley Clubs’ commitment to championing creativity, the space will feature artworks by emerging and established artists – including David Hockney. Admire sumptuous surroundings while enjoying a curated menu of Mediterranean-inspired dishes and signature cocktails.
And finally...
The women to see at Frieze Sculpture:
Leonora Carrington's part-human part-bird The Dancer (El Bailarín); Zanele Muholi's Bambatha I; and Juliana Cerqueira Leite's imaginatively inventive take on the body, Shovel, Button and Sand.
My top booths at Frieze:
The Surrealist-inspired, dream-like tapestry and wooden structures of the London-based artist Charlotte Edey at Ginny on Frederick; Nengi Omuku's wildly vibrant landscapes at Pippy Houldsworth's book; Leiko Ikemura's paintings at Lisson Gallery; Kipwani Kiwanga at Galerie Tanya Wagner; Carol Bove at Gagosian.
My top booths at Frieze Masters:
Adriana Varejão at Victoria Miro; Nathalie du Pasquier at Pace; Leonora Carrington, Bridget Tichenor, Alice Rahon, Dorothea Tanning and Remedios Varo at Gallery Wendi Norris; Judy Chicago at Gavlak; Dora Maar at Loeve & Co.
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