What to see in London during Frieze Week

Autumn has arrived bringing with it the return of Frieze London. Running from 9 to 13 October, the contemporary art fair is back for its 21st edition in Regent's Park, with more than 160 galleries competing for the attention of the world's biggest art collectors inside a sprawling tent.

This year, the Artist-to-Artist section will expand following its successful debut in 2023. Here, world-renowned artists have nominated a selection of emerging artists for six solo presentations. These include New York-based painter Rob Davis, chosen by Rashid Johnson; and Nigerian-born artist Nengi Omuku, picked by Yinka Shonibare.

Since 2012, another marquee across the park has housed Frieze Masters. The sister fair displays works made before the year 2000, from ancient pieces through to art of the 20th century. And between the two lies Frieze Sculpture: an outdoor sculpture park featuring works by international artists including Zanele Muholi and Yoshimoto Nara.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Then, there's Frieze Film – a curated selection of films that will be screened throughout the week at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). Showcasing works from "early-career and underexposed" artists, this year's films were selected by a jury helmed by Steven Cairns (head of artistic programme at ICA). Among the films are Xin Liu's "The White Stone" about the search for rocket debris in remote areas of southwest China.

More a "bazaar" than an exhibition, Frieze London is a magnet for the super-rich looking to buy their next "Damien Hirst dot painting" or "Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculpture", said Eddy Frankel in Time Out. 

But it's also become one of the hottest events in the art calendar when every gallery in the capital opens major exhibitions to entice the planet's "artists, collectors, curators and hangers-on" that flock to London for the fair.

Here are some of the best shows to catch during London Frieze Week.

Tracey Emin: I Followed You To The End, White Cube

"Energy radiates" from the works showcased at Emin's "rawest show yet", said Katy Hessel in Harper's Bazaar. Her powerful new paintings and sculptures explore life's most "intimate" moments from our "private worlds" – many are centred around beds and baths, and feature "vulnerable painterly lines amidst text and washes of reds, blues and pinks".

Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray for Love, Victoria Miro

Kusama's "dizzying" Infinity Mirror Room transports visitors to "the land of her astonishing visions", said Harper's Bazaar. The exhibition also features a series of new paintings by the revered Japanese artist, and "towering soft sculptures" that return to her "everlasting interest in the polka dot".

Sudhir Patwardhan: Cities: Built, Broken, Vadehra Art Gallery

Patwardhan worked as a radiologist for three decades before becoming a full-time artist. Now, the Indian painter is having his first solo London exhibition at the Frieze-backed project space, No. 9 Cork Street. His "insightful and emotive" paintings capture the "human lives, social fabric and urban landscape" of his homeland, said Vivienne Chow on artnet.

Anna Weyant: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves?, Gagosian

New-York based figurative painter Weyant continues her "exploration of femininity through a tragicomic lens" at this new exhibition at the Gagosian, wrote Bella Bonner-Evans on Artsy.net. Her "delicate and sensitive" renderings of female figures combine details from Weyant's life with "symbolic wit" that nods to the Surrealists.

Vincent van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, National Gallery

The aim of the National Gallery's first-ever Van Gogh exhibition is to "look past the cliches" and show that there was a "method" to the famed artist's "perceived madness", said Farah Nayeri in The New York Times. In fact, many of his works had a "specific purpose" or related to a particular place. His "greatest hits are on glorious display" alongside a series of "exquisite" drawings.

Claude Monet: Monet and London. Views of the Thames, Courtauld Gallery

Following a 1904 show of his paintings of the Thames in Paris that got "rave reviews", Monet "planned a follow-up show in London" but it never happened, said Melanie McDonagh in London's The Standard. This is the closest we'll ever get to seeing the "groundbreaking Bond Street show that never was". Don't miss out.

Francis Bacon: Human Presence, National Portrait Gallery

This "truly biting" exhibition of Francis Bacon's portraits is "the best Bacon show I have ever seen", said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. A "whirligig of horrors without a shred of connivance" it reveals both the "monstrous modernity and the timeless humanity" of the artist.