Well I guess we could or maybe should? The lack of an end of Frieze Week list this year has been commented on more than a few times, seems you like our now almost traditional end of it all sum up list, seems even the galleries look out for it, well one gallerina let it slip a couple of days ago. Must admit I thought the often rather aloof London galleries like to give the impression that they couldn’t give two hoots about what we say around here (although we did note one respected West End gallery with a full print out of a recent Organ review being handed out for the consumption of Frieze visitors).
People have been asking. Surely we’re too late for a list now though? Is it ever too late for a list? Is this year’s Frieze Week already used up chip paper long since covered in vinegar and thrown to the foxes? Oh the art of lists, hey, at least it isn’t all we do in terms of coverage, seems just a quick list is what passes for coverage with way too many art websites these day, there was something like 12,000 words written and posted on this website about Frieze itself during the week and that’s before we get to any of the other shows and events happening around the week. And to plagiarise a piece already written and posted on these pages back at start of this year’s Frieze Week, was it all a little flat this year?
Did it lack the usual buzz, was the lack of excitement or noise ahead of things almost deafening and once it got going did it really ignite? Most years we’re looking forward with a sense of anticipation, not so much for Frieze itself, the fair itself has been growing increasingly conservative (small c) year on year for a good half dozen years now, the anticipation has always been for the things that go on during the couple of weeks around the fair. I have asked this already, but is it me? Is London’s art scene feeling tired? Where are the artist led things? Stuffing knocked out of everything? No spaces left? Just for those privialged enough to afford it now? Where are those car park shows? That big thing that happened in Dockland one year? The aristi-led shows like Play? Is a group show of miniatures on the side of a canal boat, as good as it was, the best anyone can offer now? I mean CanalBoat Contemporary has been rewarding through the Summer but, as we asked at the start of it all, was that really it? The few artist-led shows that there are now seem so by-the-book polite and rather unambitious affairs, often with a new set of gate-keepers far worse then the old ones. Where’s the bite, the attitude, the swagger? It must be me? Surely things couldn’t have been that flat? Nah must be me?
Enough with the negatives, what about the good bits, the highlights. Of course there was good art, how could there not be, how many thousands of piece of art have we seen over the last couple of weeks, how many galleries have we been in? How many openings? East London day? Cork Street? Cut the words, on with the list, there was some brilliant art, let’s finally bring the curtain down on our London Frieze experience for this year….
1: Alexandre Diop’s rather exciting debut at Stephen Friedman Gallery. A solo exhibition of big bold new paintings by Franco-Senegalese artist Alexandre Diop… and yes, these paintings, if they are paintings? These very big things that hang on the wall, they do dance in such exciting ways. It instantly feels alive in here in that reverential silence of an gallery, of the gallery. You feel like your eye is dancing, tracking through the layers like a kid in sweet shop, looking at the bits behind the bits that are stapled over the bits and the way it all hangs together, that bit stitched to that bit, that bit painted over, great big powerful mixed-media works that demand you explore them and then go back and explore them again. The review in full – Alexandre Diop’s debut at Cork Street’s Stephen Friedman Gallery is a show alive with so many exciting layers of…
2: David Hepher – It is an utter treat to see these latest David Hepher pieces in the raw flesh, to just stand before the strength of the big canvases, to be within touching distance the weight of them, of that concrete… The review – The humanity of David Hepher’s brutalist concrete towers as his The Elegy of Robin Hood Gardens opens at Flowers Gallery’s Cork Street space…
3: Lauren Halsey – I almost don’t want to say it about such a part of the establishment gallery (or operation, they are far more than just a gallery now) but what a great big relief it is to to get to the big Gagosian booth and at last find a bit of attitude, a bit of a challenge, a bit of bite, a bit of something. I guess Gagosian don’t have to play it so safe, then again, I do believe the were the first gallery to declare their booth a complete sell out (although once again, who buys it? Where does it all go? It isn’t always that black and white is it?). Gagosian are presenting “new works by Lauren Halsey at the 2025 edition of Frieze London. Born in South Central Los Angeles and based there, Halsey is known for large-scale works and immersive installations that draw on the histories, architecture, social contexts, and vernacular poetics of her community” – – The Fair itself Part Three; Lauren Halsey brings a bit of attitude, a bit of a challenge, a bit of bite. Good to see a wall of Khadija Saye’s work…
4: The big George Rouy painting the same gallery are showing certainly is though, a powerfully big oil painting called Desireline II that it would have been so easy to miss paying proper attention to. See, that’s the thing, he is said to the “the British artist of the moment” but in here there is so so much noise that even the movement of his excellent faceless figures could so easily been missed. That big painting really is something, the movement of both his already trademark figures and the movement of the artist himself, the dynamic, the exploring, the mass, the sheer bloodihellness of it all, love it! Loved seeing it in the flesh. Yes! – The Fair itself Part Four; in which Aline Motta, Selma Selman, Antonis Donef and the sheer bloodihellness of George Rouy demand our attention…
5: Simon Hitchens – ‘Bearing Witness to Things Unseen’, a big black piece found in Regent’s Park as 2025 Frieze sculpture – Hang on, I really, although I said I wouldn’t cherry pick, mention Simon Hitchens and his deliciously tactile Bearing Witness to Things Unseen piece that dates from this year, it really is a piece to walk around again and again, the sides, the ends… – Exploring Frieze Sculpture before the week seriously kicks off, exploring the work of Reena Saini Kallat, Andy Holden, Assemble, Simon Hitchens, Burçak Bingöl and more… that big dog that Assemble grough to the Park deserves a mention as well.
6: Ana Segovia – The first thing that really does grab full on wow-who’s-that type attention is a solo booth of deliciously coloured paintings by Ana Segovia; apparently a new body of work that continues the artist’s “critical engagement with the visual codes of masculinity in popular culture”. Work that quite obviously (positively) take familiar images from the golden age of Mexican cinema and the Western genre as Ana Segovia “reconfigures and reimagines these familiar archetypes through pictorial interventions that challenge normative depictions of gender and national identity”. The paintings, before anything else is considered, are beautiful, the saturated colours so deliciously rich, the group of them there together really are striking (not sure if one by itself would have the same impact). The pieces are in one of the six artists selected by artists booths, Ana Segovia has been selected by Abraham Cruzvillegas and presented by Mexico/New York based Kurimanzutto Gallery. An extremely strong series of paintings that introduce a fictional character called Ramón, a character conceived as a vehicle to examine and subvert inherited narratives of male representation. Powerful paintings that focus us on fragmented gestures – in particular the character’s movements from the waist down – the paintings hint at an almost comic book choreography of intimacy, an attraction and maybe at the same time inhibition, something to desire? Something uncomfortable? Distinctive, painterly, powerfully beautiful, paintings that without a doubt demand far more time than the ten or so minutes that can be afforded to them at a fair like this but we must move on… – The Fair itself Part One; in via The Pit and Viola Frey, a gorgeous Katherine Bradford painting, the colour of Ana Segovia, Faiza Butt, llana Harris-Babou, the first hour and a bit…
7: Brandon Ndife’s, Palimpsests at Holtermann Fine Art – Palimpsests features work made in 2024, including wall-based sculpture, freestanding structures and works on paper. “The exhibition takes its title from the concept of a palimpsest – a surface layered with traces of previous marks or writings – an idea that resonates with Ndife’s ongoing exploration of history, transformation and overlay” – I like the lines in here, the way a show is put together is important, the sight lines, the way the art is coaxed into drawing you in and one you are drawn in, these slightly unsettling pieces of well, what are they? Bits of found mostly old brown furniture culled from the urban landscape and shaped in to these relatively small sculptures (is he always this small or is the size of the space dictating?)
Piece of legs of chairs and hints of things being overrun with vegetation and impending signs of both ripening and rot – those layers again, that Captain’s table thing, that hint of new growth – the works appear like relics unearthed from a distant past and yes indeed, “envoys of a dystopian future” – Here we go then, but where is the buzz? Well Brandon Ndife’s, Palimpsests at Holtermann Fine Art is at least a good start…
8: There’s a couple of Faiza Butt paintings presented by Vadehra Gallery (New Delhi), actually they might be one piece? Two figures, classical maybe, slightly religious, both gazing at each other, both with an Apple laptop under their arm and you are probably going to have to spend screen time looking at them here on this website (or via link, you are using all these links aren’t you? They do take time to put in, they are there so you can go find out more) rather then enjoying the actual paint on the actual pieces of black wooden board for yourself. It surely is one piece? That state between screen time, that third state between sleeping and awake, that screen state we spend so much time in. And that’s there thing here, there are paintings and pieces flying at you from all sides, without your phone to look back at you’d forget half of them when really we rather need to go explore more of Faiza Butt – The Fair itself Part One; in via The Pit and Viola Frey, a gorgeous Katherine Bradford painting, the colour of Ana Segovia, Faiza Butt, llana Harris-Babou, the first hour and a bit…
9: The Jahmek Contemporary booth features the work of Lilianne Kiame and Sandra Poulson (didn’t we mention her already?), both the art and what has been done with the art is strong, the installation, the paintings, the cardboard food/fruit boxes, a site specific conversation, I’m guessing the boxes are Sandra Poulson’s and the paintings on the wall those of Lilianne Kiame although I could well be wrong? There was something positively intriguing about the Jahmek Contemporary booth and the work within, the white doves. yet more to explore further – The Fair itself Part Five; a Sam Messer typewriter, the Jahmek Contemporary booth and the work of Lilianne Kiame and Sandra Poulson, Mark Greenwold, Jasmine Gregory and…
10: Katherine Bradford – and I know it might not be on the cutting edge and the right here right now, but that one painting was such a delicious delight to just stand in front of… an absolutely gorgeous Katherine Bradford painting of a group of figures in a (Californian?) swimming pool – The Fair itself Part One; in via The Pit and Viola Frey, a gorgeous Katherine Bradford painting, the colour of Ana Segovia, Faiza Butt, llana Harris-Babou, the first hour and a bit…
There was more and yes, we have deliberately not mentioned the treasures of Frieze Masters and focused on the contemporary right here right now. Of course there was more art, both at Frieze and in the galleries and events around London during the Frieze period, hit the art option to find lots lots more. Go explore our extensive coverage of this year’s fair
Previously…
THE ORGAN 
2 responses to “ORGAN: Frieze week – The obligatory ten highlights from the week list thing; Alexandre Diop, David Hepher, Lauren Halsey, George Rouy, Simon Hitchens, Ana Segovia, Brandon Ndife, Faiza Butt, Lilianne Kiame and Sandra Poulson, Katherine Bradford and…”
[…] ORGAN: Frieze week – The obligatory ten highlights from the week list thing; Alexandre Diop, David… […]
[…] ORGAN: Frieze week – The obligatory ten highlights from the week list thing; Alexandre Diop, David… […]