Putting the spotlight on spectacular pieces from across six thousand years of art, Frieze Masters returns to The Regent’s Park from October 13 to 17.

Words Reyhaan Day

Major galleries including St James’s’ Colnaghi, Agnews and Tomasso, Mayfair’s Prahlad Bubbar Gallery, Thaddaeus Ropac, David Aaron, BASTIAN, Ben Brown Fine Arts and many more will join a roster of renowned international galleries to display and sell artworks including rare antiquities, Old Master paintings and works by iconic 20th century artists. 

One of the main highlights of this year’s Frieze Masters exhibition will be a new feature section called Stand Out, curated by Luke Syson, director of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum. This initiative will bring together unique objects from across different centuries and a range of different media from participating galleries including Rome gallery Alessandra Di Castro Antichità, Belgian dealer Gisèle Croës, Paris gallery Oscar Graf and Mayfair’s Sam Fogg, highlighting the similarities and differences between artworks born many years apart.

Presentations include Stuart Lochhead Sculpture, which will be showcasing pieces in plaster by the likes of Rodin and Rachael Whiteread; and Racanello Leprince, whose themed presentation on art and medicine will recreate the atmosphere of an Italian Renaissance apothecary. “I’m really thrilled to be curating a new section at this autumn’s Frieze Masters: Stand Out,” says Syson. “A more complex, inclusive and interesting history of art emerges when we bring art objects, in a range of media, to the fore. These historic works of art contain ideas and meanings that are amazingly current.”

Frieze Masters’ Spotlight section will focus on avant-garde pioneers from across the world, curated for the third year running by executive director of The Drawing Center, New York, Laura Hoptman. Works by a diverse group of overlooked artists will be celebrated in this space, with the likes of Feliciano Centurión (Cecilia Brunson Projects/Galeria Millan), Beauford Delaney (Michael Rosenfeld Gallery) and Alice Rahon (Gallery Wendi Norris) being championed.

The director of the National Portrait Gallery Nicholas Cullinan will curate the Frieze Masters Talks programme once again, bringing contemporary artists, writers and curators together to discuss the connections between art throughout the ages and current practices. This year’s schedule will see Dries Van Noten, Amie Siegel, Erdem Moralioglu, William Kentridge and more participate. 

NO.9 CORK STREET

Back in Mayfair’s most recognisable art destination of Cork Street, Frieze has also revealed the opening programme for its new project, No.9 Cork Street.

Launching on October 7, No.9 Cork Street – a partnership between Frieze and The Pollen Estate, which has spearheaded the Cork Street Galleries initiative – will offer flexible exhibition space for visiting galleries year-round, set within two converted townhouses in the renowned art hub of Cork Street, which have been designed by Matheson Whiteley architecture studio and featuring furniture by Modernity, specialists in 20th century Nordic design. 

The programme kicks off with New York-based gallery James Cohan, which will present a solo exhibition of new work by Christopher Myers; LA-based Commonwealth and Council, which will debut new pieces by Danielle Dean, Nikita Gale, EJ Hill and P. Staff, whose work you might recognise from a Serpentine Galleries exhibition in 2019; and Guatemalan-based gallery Proyectos Ultravioleta, showing a joint exhibition by mother-daughter artists Elisabeth Wild and Vivian Suter, with the latter’s unstretched canvases contrasting against Wild’s collages. These exhibitions will run until October 23, accompanied by a series of talks, tours and events coinciding with Frieze Week.

Next month will see the programme at No.9 Cork Street continue, with exhibitions by Reykjavík’s i8 Gallery and Berlin’s Dittrich & Schlechtriem, alongside the start of partnerships with the likes of Allied Editions (pop-up of unique artists’ editions for sale) and Arts Council Collection, which supports and promotes artists by buying their work at an early or critical stage in their career, making them available to the nation’s museums and public institutions. The Arts Council Collection will be presenting an exhibition showcasing its latest acquisitions from artists including Rosa-Johan Uddoh, Olivia Bax and Adam Farah.

“It is the most exciting moment to launch No.9 Cork Street, celebrating London and its creative community after such a challenging year,” says artistic director of Frieze London, Eva Langret.

 

Photo credits: top left to bottom right

Galleria Continua, Antony Gormley

Bastian, Joseph Beuys, Perve Galeria, Cruzeiro Seixas

Ben Brown Fine Arts, Alexander Calder, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Gerhard Richter

ML Fine Art, Gastone Novelli, Bastian, A.R. Penck