From an immersive exploration of romantic love, to a Barbican show featuring Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta and more, there’s plenty on offer if you’re not attending London’s biggest art fair
Another year, another edition of Frieze at London’s Regents Park, this time bringing with it the tantalising prospect of a citywide bedbug infestation – the blood-sucking critters clinging to collectors fresh off the Eurostar from Paris Fashion Week. How glamorous!
Turning 20 this year, the opening of the art fair was officially celebrated by prime minister Rishi Sunak (a man known for his staggering disrespect for the arts... but he’s got to spend his £730 million fortune on something), with the likes of Florence Pugh and Stormzy in attendance at the private previews for VIPs.
The art itself? Most headlines have revolved around “Chomper”, a T-Rex skeleton on sale for $20 million at the neighbouring Frieze Masters. The usual suspects – Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Louise Bourgeois – have also raked in millions for big-name galleries, but otherwise it seems there’s not much to report. Luckily, there are plenty of alternative (and hopefully bedbugless) art shows that you can see this weekend instead.
For a healthy dose of anti-Frieze (apologies), read on below.
JESTERS GENDER GAME, AUSTN FISCHER AT PHOTOBOOK CAFE
Austn Fischer’s Jesters Gender Game takes its cues from Judith Butler, whose concept of “gender performance” laid the groundwork for decades of queer theory to come, as well as the provocative self-portraits of artistic visionaries Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. In Fischer’s photographs, participants explore these ideas about identity and liberation via clothing, make-up, and performance, inviting viewers to “celebrate the beauty of diversity” and embrace their authentic selves.
Jesters Gender Game is on display at Shoreditch’s Photobook Cafe on October 13.
VIRTUALLY YOURS, CHARLIE STEIN AT KRISTIN HJELLEGJERDE
Charlie Stein’s Virtually Yours revolves around a very timely question: “Can you fall in love with a thing, a robot, a photograph?” Working toward an answer, the artist presents sleek paintings of latex-clad alien dolls and pink, organic forms oozing otherworldly liquids. With erotic undertones, the images could be mistaken for graphic close-ups fed into an endless array of filters to get around social media censorship. Unsurprising, then, that Stein takes inspiration from these platforms themselves, drawing on the cyborgian phenomenon known as “Instagram face” to produce works that reside deep in the uncanny valley.
Virtually Yours runs at Kristin Hjellegjerde gallery until November 25.
RE/SISTERS, BARBICAN
The major group exhibition RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology basically does what it says on the tin, exploring the links between the historical oppression of women and the breakdown of our planet’s ecosystems. Bringing together close to 50 international women artists, the show features works by the likes of Judy Chicago, Ingrid Pollard, Ana Mendieta, Gauri Gill, and Barbara Kruger, split into six thematic sections: the politics of extraction, acts of protest and resistance, the labour of ecological care, environmental racism, queerness and fluidity.
RE/SISTERS runs at the Barbican Art Gallery until January 14, 2024.
PLEASE DON’T HURT ME, BRIXTON HOUSE
Romantic love is a multi-faceted, multi-sensory experience, and so is Please don’t hurt me, a new group show centred on the subject at Brixton House. Featuring film, poetry, and visual art, the 45-minute experience encourages visitors to shed their jackets, shoes, and phones – AKA their “21st-century layers” – at the door – to fully immerse themselves in a journey of introspection and self-realisation with the concept of modern romantic love at its heart. Expect to find work by the poet (and Dazed 100 alum Kai Isaiah Jamal), Suzannah Pettigrew, and more.
Please don’t hurt me runs at Brixton House from October 12 to October 14.
HIROSHI SUGIMOTO, HAYWARD GALLERY
The Japanese photographer and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto has spent the last half a century creating some of the world’s most striking and mysterious images, training his lens on everything from abstract lightning fields, to eerily empty theatres, to waxworks of Princess Diana and Oscar Wilde. All of it comes together in a new survey – the largest to date – at the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery, which appropriately highlights Sugimoto’s ongoing inquiry into time and memory.
The exhibition runs at Hayward Gallery from October 11 to January 7, 2024.
LISETTA CARMI: IDENTITIES, ESTORICK COLLECTION
Arriving at The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art last month, Lisetta Carmi: Identities is the first UK museum show centred on the work of the groundbreaking photographer, who passed away in 2022. Forced to flee her native Genoa by Italy’s fascist regime in 1938, her photographs – published in a controversial volume in 1972 – document the city’s marginalised working-class and trans communities throughout the 1960s, addressing ongoing social issues and shining a spotlight on oft-overlooked aspects of Italian life.
Lisetta Carmi: Identities runs at the Estorick Collection until December 17. On Saturday (October 14), catalogue author Paola Rosina will also host a talk on the photographer’s work, titled The Many Lives of Lisetta Carmi.
HUMAN STORIES: A YOUNG SOUTH AFRICA, NOW GALLERY
Opening this week, the seventh iteration of NOW Gallery’s annual Human Stories exhibition series hones in on South African photography, via a selection of photographers and creatives – Bee Diamondhead, Fede Kortez, Aart Verrips, Nikki Zakkas, Anita Hlazo, Ben Moyo and Karabo Mooki – who are committed to documenting the diverse culture of their nation. This comes at a time of turbulence for South Africa, amid declining services and spiking youth unemployment, but also a time of great creative energy among its young generation, AKA Ama2000s, making for a dynamic atmosphere of culture, music, and fashion.
Human Stories: A Young South Africa runs at Now Gallery until November 19.
YOU, ME, AND BEYOND, LUCIA DOMENICI AT CONINGSBY GALLERY
Lucia Domenici picked up street photography as a hobby when she moved to London in 2016, and her new exhibition You, Me and Beyond captures the moments of fleeting and unexpected intimacy that occur between the subject, the photographer, and their camera in passing. “You never know what someone is thinking,” says the photographer. “You are always reading between the lines, guessing what is actually on people’s minds in a rapidly changing world.” On the streets, she says, she finds “an air of proud resilience and calmness” as we leap from crisis to crisis. All of this is documented in purist, black-and-white images spanning London, New York, Chicago, Madrid, and Sydney, each focusing on a “real, authentic slice of life”.
You, Me, and Beyond runs at Coningsby Gallery until October 14.
BETWEEN THE SHADOW AND THE SOUL, TOM WHITE AT KRISTIN HJELLEGJERDE
Tom White’s show Between the Shadow and the Soul seeks to capture the intimacy of ephemeral moments with the people he knows and loves – moments of contemplation, outfitted with slogan tees and drenched in soft sunlight, or the tender touch of a veined hand on bare skin. Tactile and tender, the images seem to transport the viewer into a memory that isn’t their own, both familiar and anonymous at the same time.
Between the Shadow and the Soul runs at Kristin Hjellegjerde gallery until November 11.
LUTZ BACHER: AYE!, RAVEN ROW
Described as “unsettling” and “uncategorisable”, Lutz Bacher’s work explores music, sound, and the voice, often using appropriated material form American pop culture and the cast-offs – from porn, to pulp fiction – of the Information Age. Initiated by the US artist before her death in 2019, Lutz Bacher: AYE! includes films and installations that feature the voices of cultural icons including Leonard Cohen, James Earl Jones, and the funeral of Princess Diana, alongside installations including a sand pit and a machine that plays an electric organ, blending the conceptual and the concrete.
Lutz Bacher: AYE! runs at Raven Row until December 17.
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