Minor Attractions fair
In June 2023, London gallery owners Jacob Barnes and Jonny Tanna posed themselves a question: “Can two guys get up off the couch and run an art fair?” By October they had proved that the answer was “yes” with Minor Attractions, which launched as a satellite to Frieze. “We refer to last year’s edition as a proof of concept,” says Barnes, “but this year it’s a real art fair.”
Taking place at The Mandrake, a five-star hotel in Fitzrovia, the week-long event will commandeer rooms as fair booths, “creating a new context for London’s buzzing art scene”. Local exhibitors include Mayfair institution Sadie Coles HQ but also new nomadic gallery Bolanle Contemporary; others are joining from further afield: Tbilisi to Toronto to Seoul. “We want to create a level playing field where exciting project spaces stand alongside major international galleries,” says Barnes.
The native New Yorker opened art space Season 4 Episode 6 in Marylebone earlier this year, while Tanna runs north-west London gallery Harlesden High Street. Among their fair highlights are an LED light work by German multimedia artist Christian Jankowski, a life-size Plexiglas mannequin by Klara Zetterholm (both from Bucharest-based gallery Suprainfinit), and the deftly distorted paintings of Georgia Semple (with Deptford-based gallery Studio/Chapple).
Accessibility is key. Tickets are required but are free of charge, while a programme of night-time happenings is being hosted by the likes of dance music collective Touching Bass (which Semple is part of) and performance platform Diasporas Now. “It’s out with the old and in with the new,” says Tanna, “that’s what we’re trying to do.” VW
October 8-13, minorattractions.com
Studio Voltaire, Casa Loewe
This year marks the 30th anniversary of not-for-profit arts and education organisation Studio Voltaire, and its director, Joe Scotland is on a mission. “Like many art organisations, the support we get from the Arts Council is very small — it equates to 4 per cent of our turnover,” he says. “But we’re being very proactive about it. We’ve established the Studio Voltaire Future Fund to support our work over the next five years; thus far we’ve raised half a million pounds.”
Based in a former Victorian Methodist church in Clapham, south London, Studio Voltaire is centred on a programme of exhibitions and events that champion emerging and under-represented artists. Frieze Week presents an opportunity to celebrate its three-decade output — from career-launching shows to the “Rainbow Plaques” initiative, honouring queer communities across London — but also to add to the pot.
To that end, Allied Editions is offering a lithograph print by British painter Rose Wylie — “Party Clothes (RW and Cat)”, 2024 — in the main fair, while at Casa Loewe on New Bond Street, the fashion label’s Foundation has collaborated with Studio Voltaire and artists including Alvaro Barrington, Anthea Hamilton and Sheila Hicks on a new series of limited editions.
“Loewe is a really important partner of ours,” says Scotland, highlighting the Loewe Foundation / Studio Voltaire Award that supports an international residency as well as free studio space for London-based artists. “They also have amazing in-house artisans.” This has enabled Barrington to create a “chain wrapped in leather, which can be used as jewellery or a charm”, while Hamilton has conceived a leather fan, de-embossed with the phrases “Che Bello/Che Brutta” (How Beautiful/How Ugly). VW
October 9-13, studiovoltaire.org
Lygia Clark, Whitechapel Gallery
Lygia Clark (1920-88) revolutionised art by making it interactive. Fed up with the rigidity of concrete art, the Brazilian trailblazer created works that were meant to be touched, manipulated and experienced by audiences. Her innovative “Bichos” (“critters”) were hinged geometric forms that viewers could fold and reshape. These feature in The I and the You, a major survey at Whitechapel Gallery that traces her output from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. During this period, Clark experimented with ways to transform art into a shared experience while navigating Brazil’s military dictatorship and, later, exile in Paris. The show includes paintings, works on paper and even performances restaging the artist’s participatory group works. KF
To January 12, whitechapelgallery.org
Marlene Dumas at Frith Street Gallery
Myth and grief swirl through Marlene Dumas’s new exhibition at Frith Street Gallery. Its title, Mourning Marsyas, references Ovid’s tale of a satyr who challenged Apollo to a music competition; his punishment for losing to the god was to be flayed alive. In a haunting painting of the same name, the South African painter transforms this gruesome story into what the gallery calls “a homage to those prepared to die for speaking truth to power”. Drawing from a range of visual and literary sources, other works, with their spectral figures and blurred faces, allude to distressing tragedies or capture dark moods. KF
To November 16, frithstreetgallery.com
Robert Longo at Pace and Thaddaeus Ropac
In Searchers, a two-part exhibition, Robert Longo continues his career-long exploration of diverse visual media. At Thaddaeus Ropac, the American artist builds on his multimedia “Combines” with a seven-metre work, “Untitled (Pilgrim)”, composed of five panels each executed in different media: charcoal drawing, video, painting, sculpture and photography. Inspired by Sergei Eisenstein’s montage theory and John Berger’s seminal book Ways of Seeing, the new work contrasts art-historical images with film stills, ads and news photographs of disasters to interrogate how meaning is created and disseminated. Concurrently, a companion piece, “Untitled (Hunter)”, will also be exhibited at Pace Gallery. KF
October 8-November 20 ropac.net; Oct 9-Nov 9, pacegallery.com
Letizia Battaglia, The Photographers’ Gallery
Letizia Battaglia put her life on the line with her work. Her career as a photojournalist began in the 1970s, and though she frequently captured daily life in her hometown of Palermo, she is remembered for her fearless documentation of the Mafia’s unrelenting grip on Sicily during the 1970s and 1980s. The Photographers’ Gallery will show a wide selection, from arresting images of small children brandishing guns to bodies beneath white sheets and a woman dancing at a New Year’s Eve party. NA
October 9-February 23, thephotographersgallery.org.uk
Yayoi Kusama, Victoria Miro
With decades of era-defining artwork behind her, it is difficult to imagine how Yayoi Kusama will continue to excite attendees at her latest exhibition. Yet with Everyday I Pray for Love at Victoria Miro, the 95-year-old artist does just that. Paintings feature her singular explorations of line and form and signature polka-dot patterning; treelike forms are made from stuffed and sewn fabrics; drawings of women’s profiles are given new life in bronze. But the big draw is Infinity Mirrored Room — Beauty Described by a Spherical Heart, where visitors will find their reflections refracted into infinity in a new light-filled installation. NA
To November 2, victoria-miro.com
Lauren Hasley at the Serpentine
Emajendat is the first UK exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Lauren Halsey. Her South Central upbringing is an integral source of inspiration in her work, and her mixed-media installations and standalone objects often explore material culture. At the Serpentine, pink plastic tubes are turned into palm trees and luridly coloured signs are emblazoned with brand names in a maximalist vision. Visitors will find themselves wading through technicolour sand dunes and wandering past mirrored walls and floors plastered with discarded CDs. NA
October 11-March 2, serpentinegalleries.org
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