T he international art world descends on London this week for Frieze London, Frieze Masters and the various satellite fairs it has inspired over the years. With many exhibitions opening at the city's biggest museums and galleries, there is plenty to keep both new visitors and veterans stimulated and entertained the length and breadth of London. Here, we round up the best exhibitions on offer, from the blockbuster museum shows, to smaller projects off the beaten track...
Contemporary Art Evening & Day Auctions, Sotheby’s
The Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions are this year joined by Bauhaus_Defining a Century, as well as In Context — The Italian Sale. Visitors to the galleries will also be able to see classic pieces of design, furniture, photography and painting from the Bauhaus school, in Sotheby's first curated sale of its kind. Works by David Hockney, Cy Twombly, Wolfgang Tillmans and Cecily Brown will go up for sale in the culmination of the week's events. The exhibition for these sales will be open in the New Bond Street Galleries from 30 September until 5 October, and you can also see the highlights online.
Sotheby's, 34–35 New Bond St, London W1A 2AA.
Nearby: The Royal Academy of Arts
WOLFGANG TILLMANS, GREIFBAR 26. ESTIMATE £150,000–200,000. GILBERT & GEORGE, THE OFFICE. ESTIMATE £400,000–600,000.
PAD, Berkeley Square
Now in its 11th year, PAD festival is a well-established fixture in the London art fair calendar. Offering the very best in contemporary design alongside more traditional pieces and exquisite museum-quality fine art, this elegant fair is the perfect place to wander around when thinking about your interior as a whole. With advice from leading designers and consultants, PAD is a one-stop-shop for devotees of design excellence and exceptional craftsmanship.
PAD, Berkeley Square, W1.
Nearby: Sotheby’s New Bond Street
DOSHI & LEVIAN, CABINET, 2017. COURTESY OF SÈVRES.
Frieze London and Frieze Masters
Other art fairs come and go, but Frieze is the original and best, and where emerging talents sit comfortably alongside established names. Laying the foundations for their empire in early 2003 and named after the magazine they founded in 1991, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover created Frieze London, Frieze Masters (and in recent years Frieze New York) to allow collectors, curators, artists and aficionados alike to gather, see and be seen. Where else would you be able to visit Hauser & Wirth, Perrotin, Sadie Coles HQ and Gavin Brown's enterprise in the space of an hour? Other highlights include Frieze Projects with performances this year by Mark Fell, Neha Choksi and Candida Powell-Williams, and talks on the state of contemporary art by Ralph Rugoff and Alison M Gingeras, among others. If it all gets too much (they are by no means small) there are a whole host of cafes, bars and restaurants on site and a shuttle bus to take you between each fair, though a walk through the Frieze Sculpture Park is a far more scenic route...
Frieze Art Fairs, Regent's Park, Park Square West, London NW1 4NR.
Nearby: The Wallace Collection, The British Museum. Camden Arts Centre
FRIEZE LONDON, 2016.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Boom for Real, The Barbican
The great and good of London's gallery world save their blockbuster shows for this autumnal period, and the 2017 season is no different. Opening to great fanfare, and widely regarded as long overdue, Jean-Michel Basquiat: Boom for Real at the Barbican is the must-see exhibition for out-of-towners and Londoners alike. Focusing on this enigmatic figure's work from the decade in which he was active, his lasting influence is demonstrated in this major survey of Basquiat's inimitable output. The first ever solo exhibition of Basquiat in Britain, the show is comprised of more than 100 works and includes archival film and photography of the artist and his circle, including Keith Haring and Andy Warhol. Read our profile of Basquiat before you go, and keep an eye out for Banksy's homage to Basquiat on the walls outside the gallery — he painted it under cover of night just days before the show opened…
The Barbican, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS.
Nearby: Whitechapel Gallery
INSTALLATION VIEW OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: BOOM FOR REAL, AT THE BARBICAN ART GALLERY. © TRISTAN FEWINGS/GETTY IMAGES.
The Hyundai Turbine Hall Commission, Tate Modern
This year Danish collective SUPERFLEX will take centre stage for the Turbine Hall Commission at Tate Modern, traditionally unveiled during Frieze Week. The Copenhagen-based collective, who refer to their artworks as 'tools', produce film, installation and photography to navigate complex social and political issues, and have often made reference to global climate change, migration and the power of the community. This latest intervention, in one of London's largest post-industrial buildings, is sure to comment on topical themes, whilst making clever and subversive use of this iconic space. While you're here, check out the blockbuster exhibition Soul of Nation: Art in Age Of Black Power, and take the lift up to the viewing platform at the top of the Switch House extension, which offers 360° views over the London skyline.
Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG.
Nearby: The Jerwood Drawing Prize at Jerwood Space, Southwark.
SUPERFLEX, SUPERGAS, 1997. © SUPERFLEX.
Everything at Once, 180 The Strand
Everything at Once is the latest group show from Lisson Gallery in collaboration with the Vinyl Factory. Part record label, part arts agency, the Vinyl Factory operate where art, music, film and immersive events intersect. Previous projects include Jeremy Deller's British Pavilion exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale, for which they pressed limited edition records of factory sounds for guests to take away with them. Here, they join creative forces with Lisson Gallery who are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their space on Bell Street by bringing together their roster of artists to show new and historic work. The curators insist this is not a chronological history of the artists they have worked with, rather an 'interconnected journey' through the ideas of artists such as Ai Weiwei, Dan Graham, Ceal Floyer, Susan Hiller and Lee Ufan.
180 the Strand is an imposing brutalist building that is the current home of The Store as well as playing host to a number of ambitious exhibitions including last year's hit show The Infinite Mix: Contemporary Sound and Image, conceived by the Vinyl Factory with the Hayward Gallery whilst their permanent home on the South Bank is refurbished. It reopens in January 2018 with the first UK major retrospective of Andreas Gursky.
180 The Strand, London, WC2R 1EA.
Nearby: The National Gallery, The Courtauld, Whitechapel Gallery, 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair @ Somerset House
SUSAN HILLER, CHANNELS, 2013. © SUSAN HILLER. PHOTOGRAPH OH DANCY. COURTESY OF LISSON GALLERY AND VINYL FACTORY.
Dalí / Duchamp, The Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Academy shines a light on the relationship between two titans of modern art, who arguably shaped the way art is made and consumed to this day. The exhibition includes rarely seen photographs by Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp's ground-breaking readymades and candid correspondence between the two artists. Curated by Dawn Ades, William Jeffett and Sarah Lea, Dalí / Duchamp brings some 80 works together that examine the important friendship that played out during the inception of Surrealism and the birth of conceptual art.
The Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD.
Nearby: Sotheby's, PAD, Berkeley Square, Serpentine Galleries and Pavilion (until 19 November), Hyde Park.
MARCHEL DUCHAMP, FOUNTAIN, 1917, (REPLICA, 1964). © SUCCESSION MARCEL DUCHAMP/ADAGP, PARIS AND DACS, LONDON, 2017.
Jasper Johns: 'Something Resembling Truth', Royal Academy of Arts
Jasper Johns' Flag (1954) is one of the most recognisable paintings in contemporary visual culture, and a motif to which he returned at several points in his career. It goes on display at the RA alongside some 150 works by one of the leading figures of the Pop Art movement. After the success of 2016's Abstract Expressionism show, the RA turns its lens to another great American painter, surveying Johns' career – and contribution to image-making – over a period of 60 years. Whilst you're here, there's also still time to see Matisse in the Studio – an intimate look at the objects and source material the artist surrounded himself with.
The Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD.
Nearby: Sotheby's, PAD, Berkeley Square, Serpentine Galleries and Pavilion (until 19 November), Hyde Park.
JASPER JOHNS, TARGET, 1961. © JASPER JOHNS/VAGA, NEW YORK/DACS, LONDON, 2017. COURTESY ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO/ART RESOURCE, NY/SCALA, FLORENCE.
Other highlights across London –
Rachel Whiteread at Tate Britain
Richard Wentworth, Concertina Outset commission at London City Island
Thomas Ruff at Whitechapel Gallery
Katharina Grosse: This Drove My Mother Up The Wall at South London Gallery
Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines at The Photographers' Gallery
Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains at the V&A
Contemporary Art Evening Auction, Contemporary Art Day Auction, Bauhaus_Defining a Century and In Context Italian Art are all on display at our Bond Street Galleries from 30 September – 5 October 2017. Register to bid in these sales.
