This Wednesday the Frieze Art Fair opens for five glorious days of high art and people watching. Over 170 international galleries are attending London’s art Mecca, and this year’s specially commissioned projects to earmark in advance include Cartier
This Wednesday the Frieze Art Fair opens for five glorious days of high art and people watching. Over 170 international galleries are attending London’s art Mecca, and this year’s specially commissioned projects to earmark in advance include Cartier Award winner Simon Fujiwara’s archaeological dig, excavating the remains of a civilisation devoted to art, and a new performance by the maven of carnivalesque mayhem Spartacus Chetwynd. But before we check out what’s dazzling art collectors, there’s a full-to-bursting diary of exhibitions to work through, all opening across the city in step with the fair. Asides from the mega-event, Ai Wei Wei’s million porcelain sunflower seeds for his Turbine Hall Commission at Tate Modern, must-sees include…
Jesscia Jackson Hutchins, Timothy Taylor Gallery,W1.
This young American sculptor has been wowing critics in the States with defiantly odd, beguiling conflations of hand-made ceramics with gorgeous glazes and her own battered furniture.
Suzanne Phillipsz, Art Angel, Various Venues.
A contender for this year’s Turner Prize, the Scottish artist has installed her eerie, melancholy recordings of madrigals sung a cappella, along the Thames Path.
Christian Marclay, White Cube, Mason’s Yard.
Famed for video installations remixing cinema iconography, Marclay’s latest work is an extraordinary feat of endurance: a day-long journey around a clock face, minute-by-minute, crafted from salvaged movie clips.
Urs Fischer, Sadie Coles, W1.
Inaugurating a new gallery for Sadie Coles on New Burlington Street the Swiss bad boy of contemporary sculpture is showing a new series of mirrored screen-printed boxes. He’s also curated an exhibition of work by the late Angus Fairhurst in her other gallery on South Audley Street.
Move: Choreographing You, The Hayward Gallery, SE1.
Exploring the evolution of contemporary art alongside dance, this show features landmark sculpture and installations designed to make art physical, by the likes of Bruce Nauman, Mike Kelley and Christian Jankowski.
Anna Parkina, Wilkinson Gallery, E2.
This Russian artist first came to wider artworld attention at last year’s Venice Biennale, when her work was included in director Daniel Birnbaum’s centrepiece group show, Making Worlds. Pop culture and urban life are woven into retro-looking, rhythmic collages featuring painting, drawing and photocopies.
Matt Johnson, Alison Jacques, W1.
There’s plenty of wit and ingenuity in the London debut of young Los Angelino sculptor Matt Johnson. Traditional subject matter like busts and reclining figures have been approached with an eyebrow arched. Figures in squidgy modelling clay turn out to be cast bronze while a pack of American Spirit provides a jaunty prompt to discussions of art and the transcendental.
Peter Blake, The Museum of Everything, NW1.
This was one of London’s most popular art attractions last year featuring outsider art selected by rockstars and celebs. Now it’s back with cutesy-freaky Victorian dioramas of stuffed animals and Pop Art legend Peter Blake’s personal collection of oddities.
Text by Skye Sherwin
