I guess Frieze Week has (almost) started, the Thursday night before next week’s midweek Fair opening, although it felt like the much anticipated Frieze Week was in the air at Rose Easton’s at the start of last weekend. Second Thursday of October, although First Thursday is a long forgotten thing now. Cork Street and curiosity in terms of the Robin F Williams presentation at No.9 by New York’s always interesting P.P.O.W Gallery. P.P.O.W always come to Frieze London with something interesting, usually only at the Fair itself, this time they’re one of the guest galleries at the ever evolving and now five year old Frieze-run No.9 Cork Street. Two guest galleries in the space for Frieze Week although, there is the mystery of the upstairs back room and a third? 

A rush into the West End from our Hackney bunker then, off to Cork Street mostly for the Robin F Williams exhibition before the main objective of the evening that is the opening of Pia Camil‘s solo show at Elizabeth Xi Bauer‘s Exmouth Market space just up from Faringdon…

The rush to Cork Street landed us in the street at a couple of minutes past six, Holtermann is already closed, I keep missing that space by minutes (or finding a back in five minutes note on the door or going in expecting the space to be open only to find it isn’t, my fault entirely tonight…) I do like Holtermann, the current Ahmed Umar looks rather interesting through the window, more on these pages very soon I expect. Still the forlorn sight of the very big and very empty former Stephen Friedman space directly over from Holtermann and there are a couple more empty spaces or missing galleries now, Tiwani Contemporary will be particularly missed. Our six o’clock arrival means we’ve missed the recently opened William Kentridge exhibition at Goodman as well and the Ian Davenport exhibition has already closed as well, enough of that though, we’re mostly here for tonight’s opening at No.9 and a look at the Graham Little opening over the street at Alison Jacques…

No.9 Cork Street has been there in the middle of the street for five years now, there’s usually three guest galleries being hosted in the space (we won’t mention the eye watering amounts of money involved in these arrangements, we all know what Frieze is about);  “The Third Line is pleased to present No History of Shapes / لا تاريخ للأشكال; Jordan Nassar’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition brings together a new body of multi-panel embroidery works and vibrant mosaics that recontextualise the history and aesthetic traditions of Palestine. In his delicate embroidery works, Nassar introduces a new geometric language inspired by the seminal Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s Convertible series, while extending his poignant inquiry of colour and patterns….”   – five points deducted for the use of ‘vibrant’ as a description in the introduction (you galleries need to stop using AI to write your statements, typos are far more enticing, the almost perfection of imperfection over those AI corrected statements any day of the week). Actually Jordan Nassar’s work here in No.9 feels a little subdued, subtle, restrained, all in a (kind of) positive way though, and yes, to state the bleedin’ obvious, the Palestinian-American New York born (1985) artist is clearly considering the matters of heritage and homeland – “Jordan Nassar’s embroidery-focused practice has expanded over the years to include furniture, metal, wood inlay, glasswork and mosaic drawing” – dare I say it all feels a little polite, a little too playing it safe and not pushing the possibilities forward, which of course considering the current Palestinian uncertainty is rather understandable, not sure his language is new though…

Upstairs we have, well once again, let’s let the gallery do the introductions;  “P·P·O·W is pleased to present Act Natural, Robin F. Williams’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom and the gallery’s first international pop-up presentation at Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street” – Now Robin F. Williams has had me intrigued for a while, really wanted to see the work in the flesh, really not sure what I think of the pieces from what I’ve seen so far on line, still not sure what I think now I’ve seen the work in the flesh? Certainly interesting. The colours certainly pop, if it is Pop then it is future focused Pop popping at us. There’s pieces of the walls that, well, if we’re just looking at the basics, the basics being just paintings hanging on the walls, then I really can’t say I like them, indeed there’s a couple of pieces I really (really) don’t like. However, dig a bit deeper, explore what might be being said, explore what’s being explored by the artist and there’s a piece or two that starts to draw you in and not so much explain themselves (they obviously don’t need to do that), than challenge what you think you might be looking at in a rather positive way.      

P·P·O·W go on to say they that Williams is “expanding upon their previous investigations into horror films and the feminisation of AI assistants, Williams fuses art historical, literary, and pop culture references to create their multivalent narrative compositions. Featuring a new body of paintings and works on paper, Act Natural serves as both the title of the exhibition and a prompt leading viewers into a place where science, technology, and mysticism collide” and that “since 2018, Williams has developed a body of work that examines the growing reliance on virtual assistants, most notably Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. This longstanding interest serves as the foundation for Williams’s latest paintings that explore a revival of the gothic sublime shaped by the fears and fervour surrounding society’s rapidly changing technological landscape and the accelerating rise of AI. Returning to an aesthetic blending of awe and terror in the face of vast uncontrollable forces that defy human reason, works such as Language Model, 2026, embody a hybrid state of being. Engulfed in a swirling torrent, the female figure teeters on the edge of romance and horror, birth and death, real and artificial. She is at once of nature and removed from it…” 

It kind of feels like this current work, even though there is already quite a body and history of past work and an awareness of the artist already built up, this feels like it is still only the start of the journey of entanglements for the rather intriguing Robin F. Williams. Their own website says “Robin F Williams is a painter based in Brooklyn, NY. Her figurative paintings explore pervasive American narratives about childhood, identity and gender”. Born in Columbus OH in 1984 (when some of us were already robot dancing art students performing on the the street to fund the first print run of Organ, this show is making me feel old), Williams is already a significant voice. 

That on going rather obvious question of do we always have to ‘like’ the art to appreciate it? I certainly like the challenges here, the questions, the enquiry, the nature of the debate and certainly some of that colour, I like one or two of the pieces, I don’t really like others. I am intrigued by the art and where Robin F Williams is going with all this, as well as how they and we arrived at this point we’re collectively at right now, I like the here and now of it all, the future of it, the possibilities. Good to see the artist over here, good to see the work for real rather than asking Alexa to show us (no of course I have not one of those Alexa things, I’m still raging at QR codes and those damn electric looms)      

There is a third room of art at No.9, sculptural hangings, rather beautiful pieces, I was kind of expecting to come home, go on the No.9 website and find out who’s art it was as well as who was presenting it, alas no information to be found anywhere. Watch this space, no doubt Cork Street will cal us back at least a couple of times in the coming week, we shall no duobt eventually find out, it looked worth finding out about it… 

Back over the street, there’s an opening at Alison Jacques, A Graham Little exhibition that we’ll get to on the next page… (sw)

P·P·O·W Gallery‘s presentation of Robin F. Williams in on until 24th October 2026 at No.9 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LL. Jordan Nassar is at the same space until the same date..

Ahmed Umar is at Holtermann until well, who knows, Gallery’s social media says it should have finished already?

As always do click on an image to enlarge it or to run the slide show…