5 Shows to See in London During Frieze Week

October 9, 2023

This year Frieze London turns 20 and galleries and institutions have put on a visual feast across the British capital, with myriad rich offerings, especially by women. In terms of high-profile names, Tate Britain has a retrospective of Sarah Lucas, there’s Nicole Eisenmann at the Whitechapel, Avery Singer at Hauser & Wirth, and White Cube has a major show of Julie Mehretu’s work. Elsewhere, you can find Mary Corse at Pace, Christina Quarles at Pilar Corrias, Sheila Hicks at Alison Jacques, Sylvia Snowden at Edel Assanti, and Tamara Henderson at Camden Arts Centre.

Among less established artists, Claudia Alarcón, a textile artist from the indigenous Wichí communities of northern Argentina, will have her UK debut at Cecilia Brunson Projects; Pippi Houldsworth is showing Wangari Mathenge; Alice Black is mounting a show of Amber Pinkerton; Daisy Collingridge at TJ Boulting; Anna Uddenberg at The Perimeter; and Phoebe Collings-James at Arcadia Missa—the list goes on. And I’d be remiss not to give a special shout out to the ambitious Barbican group show “Re/Sisters: A Lens on Gender and Ecology,” a tribute, through photography and moving image, to some 50 women and gender-nonconforming artists who have shone a light on the links between environmental degradation and oppression of women.

Besides these, here is a brief glimpse of five of the most exciting shows happening right now in the city.

“Claudette Johnson: Presence” at The Courtauld

Image Credit: Photo Andy Keate/©Claudette Johnson/Courtesy the artist and Holllybush Gardens/Private collection

One of the founding members of the Black British Arts Movement from the 1980s, Claudette Johnson is the first Black artist to have a solo show at The Courtauld. Spanning the early 1980s to the present, Johnson’s magnificent large-scale figurative works on paper exert a powerful presence. The artist’s depictions of Black men and women are tender, thoughtful, and complex, challenging reductive stereotypes and art historical traditions of representation. A trilogy of watercolor, gouache, and pastel works from 1982–86, for instance, portrays three women standing, their heads cropped by the frame, captured in poses of their choosing; the central figure appears self-assured, the other two inscrutable, which is the point. Another work from 1982, And I Have My Own Business in This Skin, is in part a response to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and depicts a naked Black woman amid fractured forms and blocks of color, holding the viewer’s gaze with poise.

Two recent works portraying Johnson with African sculptures continue this dialogue, which gains rich additional layers from the surrounding context of works by Gauguin, Manet, and other well-known names in the collection. Beautifully curated by Dorothy Price and Barnaby Wright, the show brings out the different rhythms and energies with which Johnson imbues her works. In some, the entire picture plane is filled, while in others, expanses left white are contrasted with vivid, intoxicating hues. Johnson’s are not conventional portraits, but exquisite, intimate compositions conveying the humanity and the interiority of her figures. You can almost hear them thinking. This is a must-see.

Through January 14, 2024, at The Courtauld, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN.
“Farah Al Qasimi: Abort, Retry, Fail” at Delfina Foundation

Image Credit: Photo Tim Bowditch/Courtesy the artist and Delfina Foundation

The show’s title, “Abort, Retry, Fail,” refers to the error message that still flashes up on Farah Al Qasimi’s now defunct family computer, but could equally be a kind of self-help instruction for navigating the real/virtual ambiguities of our networked world. The show, which encompasses photography, collage, vinyl wallpaper, and video, neatly draws out this state of uncertainty. In Anood Playing House Flipper (2023) a woman in a purple abbaya sits before a gaming computer whose open laptop screen invites us into another world. Another image, featuring a leaping plastic dolphin spewing water against an orange sky, might easily inhabit the fantasy universe, but it is actually a real world scene, a testament to our planet-harming love affair with synthetics.

Al Qasami, who is based between Brooklyn and Abu Dhabi, plays with this tension between nature and artifice in Horizon Study, a vinyl wall landscape framed by lush tropical flowers and a voluminous green plastic bag that seems to take on an unearthly animate quality. Shot at sunset, the scene is collaged with miniature associative images of suns—oranges, peaches, mangoes, emojis, fiery suns in smoke-clogged skies from forest fires, apocalyptic suns, video game suns. These tangerine orbs haunt the works like a sickly, omniscient eye. The real/virtual push-and-pull of the images in the show reaches its apogee in the video installation Signs of Life. Immersed within a soporific cocoon of flowery floor cushions, with soft music wafting through the space,you watch images of nature unfolding on what looks like a tablet set against a kitsch idyll of waterfalls. But Al Qasami confounds our expectations again; it turns out we might in fact be inside some sort of video game involving a quest—or are we?

Through November 20, at Delfina Foundation, 29/31 Catherine Place, London SW1E 6DY.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas at Frith Street Gallery

Image Credit: Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Galleyr, London

For her first show with this London gallery, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, the Roma artist and activist behind the memorable Polish Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, is presenting a stunning series of textile portraits on wooden stretchers that appear to float ethereally on midnight blue velvet. The series, titled “Siukar Manusia” (translated as “great, or wonderful people”), depicts first-generation inhabitants of the Nowa Huta model socialist housing project in Krakow, who were settled there under the communist regime. “I chose this background to show that they came to us from darkness and we see them, and they are visible now and they have their own voice. They can say something about themselves. And we give them dignity; I give them dignity,” the artist has said.

The “Siukar Manusia” series developed out of the large-scale textile installation that Mirga-Tas made for Venice, inspired by the 15th-century frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, northern Italy. Her version, though, infused seasonal scenes and zodiac signs with Romani vernacular elements such as women playing cards, sewing, or plucking chickens. A member of Poland’s Bergitka Roma community, Mirga-Tas is concerned with combating the negative stereotyping of Romani people through the creation of a humane, multifarious iconography. At Frith Street, the portraits have been made with fabric that belonged to friends, family, and Roma community members, and each one tells a story of triumph over adversity. They commemorate Romani survivors of labor camps, musicians, builders and cooks, and speak of children separated from parents and other tragedies. I found myself drawn to the activist and first woman Romani tram driver Krystyna Gil (2022), whose family was murdered by the Nazis. Dressed in bold colors, she sits looking squarely at the viewer beside a standing lamp, a figure of hope and resilience in spite of everything.

Through November 11, at Frith Street Gallery, 17–18 Golden Square London W1F 9JJ.
Marina Abramović at Royal Academy

Image Credit: ©Marina Abramović/Courtesy the Marina Abramović Archives

After a three-year delay due to Covid, this retrospective of Marina Abramović is the first solo show by a female artist in the main galleries since the Royal Academy opened in 1768. Documenting iconic early performances to recent endurance feats like the 75-day The Artist is Present (2010)at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it feels like a momentous event and cements Abramović’s legacy as a courageous pioneer in her field. One room is devoted to Rhythm O (1974), the Belgrade-born artist’s astonishing six-hour performance in an Italian gallery, where increasingly sadistic viewers were invited to do as they chose to her with 72 implements laid out on a table, including chains, knives, and a pistol with a single bullet. The table has been reconstructed alongside projections of the performance, which ended when the loaded gun was held to her head. In a room filled with collaborative performances by Abramović and her former partner, the late Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen), we see them locked in an unending kiss, repeatedly shouting, slapping, and running into each other.

Elsewhere, Abramović’s extreme explorations of the body’s mental and physical thresholds have involved stabbing between her increasingly bloody fingers with 20 knives, taking tranquilizing medication given to schizophrenia patients, and cutting a star shape into her stomach with a razor. An interactive room of healing crystals feels anti-climatic and trite amid the documentation of these brave, uncompromising actions, and the works become less substantial approaching the present. But what prevents the exhibition from feeling like a historic journey through Abramović’s—admittedly enthralling—greatest hits is the participation of a new generation of performing artists, who will re-create and interpret several of her pieces throughout its run. During my visit, two naked artists were restaging Ulay and Abramović’s 1977 work Imponderabilia, forming a narrow doorway with their bodies that gallery-goers had to squeeze awkwardly through to pass between rooms. Further on, a young naked woman lay beneath a skeleton above a video projection of Abramović performing the same piece. If they lack the fervor of the original works, these live performances nonetheless inject energy into the show and point up a way to keep Abramović’s trailblazing legacy alive and evolving.

Through January 1, 2024, at Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD, UK.
“Shadi Al-Atallah: Fistfight” at Guts Gallery

Image Credit: Photo Eva Herzog Studio/Courtesy the artist and Guts Gallery

Saudi-born artist Shadi Al-Atallah has been steadily gaining attention, with their inclusion in the group show “Unruly Bodies” at CCA Goldsmiths earlier this year and current participation in “Dreaming of Home”atthe Leslie Lohman Museum in New York. Their painting show “Fistfight” mostly presents pairs of figures locked in combat, contorted in gravity-defying positions, their bodies seeming to melt into undistinguishable, gender-ambiguous knots of limbs, breasts, and genitalia at points. The press release cites the Epic of Gilgamesh and other monumental fights from literature and mythology as the inspiration behind the series of paintings. Although the white chalked faces wear often grimacing, Bacon-esque expressions above writhing, hurling bodies, there is a strong erotic charge running through these scenes, complicating the initial impression of violence.

Al Atallah’s use of large expanses of vibrant color alongside a motif of fiery orange flames invigorates these intriguing works. Moreover, a crudely painted circle in several of the works evokes a wrestling ring, although the encounters are all located within oppressive domestic spaces, as evidenced by the plug sockets and sparse furnishings. It is clear that these intimate corporeal exchanges are taking place within a controlled space, even if there is a palpable sense of pain. That’s especially evident in a suite of smaller works that show someone in a chokehold, a head being pressed down and a foot pushing up someone’s chin. Yet the emotional timbre here is not reducible to pain or pleasure; nor does it seem that the outcome is about victory or defeat. There is the disquieting sense of voyeurism in being privy to what may in fact be figures playing out an intense psychological struggle.

Through October 25, at Unit 2 Sidings House, 10 Andre Street Hackney, London, E8 2AA.