October marks a busy month for London’s art scene, as Frieze and Frieze Masters descend on the capital. These are the best London exhibitions to visit in October.
Every year, October marks a strong month for the arts in London, as the international creative community arrive to showcase the very best of both modern art, as well as modern art’s older muses with fairs, exhibitions, and installations. This October is no exception, as the fashion runway comes to life through immersive installations in King’s Cross, while Somerset House celebrates Black Queer history. Whether you’re attending Frieze and Frieze Masters this year, or one of the many other art fairs taking place this month, don’t miss out on these exhibitions.
Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage, The Photographers' Gallery, London
“Fashion takes itself more seriously than I do. I’m not really a fashion photographer.” – Deborah Turbeville in The New Yorker, 2011.
Five women stand in a bathhouse, idly and elegantly poised, with only one looking at the camera. We know this photograph is staged, but it feels like we’ve walked straight into the women’s locker room. No-one can quite manage to capture the transient richness of a passing moment like Deborah Turbeville. This image, taken for Vogue in 1975, controversially shifted the standards of fashion photography: Deborah Turberville’s style was a far from the clean-cut, sharp editorial that graced glossy magazine pages in the late 20th century. In her shots, clothes take a backseat and a whimsical, wintry atmosphere comes first. There’s an element of the female psyche that rings through her atmospheric compositions – something that until then had been altogether excluded from fashion editorial. The Photographers’ Gallery is revisiting the impact of Turberville’s work with this retrospective exhibition featuring some of her most iconic editorial and advertorial work. To accompany it, lots of Turberville’s personal, vintage photocollages will be on display; the artist was known to experiment – just like she did with her composition, colour, and lighting – in the darkroom, ripping up sketchbooks and photographic novels, and collaging them with her own images for striking results.
A Group Exhibition, Cadogan Gallery
Founded in 1980, Cadogan Gallery has brought contemporary artists to the forefront of London’s Belgravia, as well as Milan, for the past forty years. To coincide with Frieze London taking over Regent’s Park this week, Cadogan have opened their new flagship gallery on Harriet Street in South Kensington, inaugurating the space with an impressive group exhibition featuring 21 artists defining current art trends. The focus of Cadogan Gallery: A Group Exhibition is on the rich materiality of abstraction in contemporary art, meaning the variety of ways in which artists express non-representational – or abstract – forms. From surreal landscape paintings to sculptures fashioned from marble, the exhibition spotlights the innovative creativity of the artists of our time.
The Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London, Fashion And Textile Museum
It’s 1985 and Taboo nightclub has just opened in London’s Leicester Square. The venue by designer and performance artist Leigh Bowery, known for their flamboyant costumes and conceptual art, was nothing short of a scene in London’s nightlife – a work of art itself. The ‘dress as though your life depends on it’ dress code drew the city’s avant-garde, sartorial crowds from far-flung boroughs – and now the evidence is strung on the gallery walls of Bermondsey’s Fashion and Textile Museum. Rare pieces from John Galliano, John Fleet, Stephen Lenard and more are on show, displayed next to the music scene that helped bring the clothes to life.
Tracey Emin: I Followed You To The End, White Cube Bermondsey
We all know her name, and for good reason. British artist Dame Tracey Emin has helped define contemporary British art across her impressive career, with autobiographical and confessional works. Bermondsey’s White Cube displays the artist’s latest solo exhibition titled I followed you to the end, featuring new paintings and large sculptures – each with Emin’s profound sense of intensity and intimacy. The exhibition moves between sculpture, short film and painting, grappling with the unsettling feelings of living with a life-threatening illness, speaking to Emin’s own experiences. In true Emin style, the paintings bear no specific identity through facial recognition, instead, subtle markers of her cat and home in the backdrops ground the artworks.
Vanessa Bell: A World Of Form And Colour, MK Gallery
100 years on from the 1920s, when modernist art grappled with the tumultuous social and economic landscape, painter Vanessa Bell has been at the forefront of many exhibitions in the UK this year, from Charleston House in Lewes to the Courtauld in the capital. The latest to celebrate her pioneering impact on the widely popular period of art is MK Gallery with Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour. What makes this exhibition so special? Despite Vanessa Bell’s art hung in most of the UK’s prestigious modernist exhibits, this marks Bell’s largest ever solo show, including drawings, paintings, ceramics, and furniture.
Making A Ruckus! Black Queer Histories Through Love And Resistance, Somerset House
Filmmaker, writer, and artist Topher Campbell, know for his exploration of sexuality, masculinity, race, the city, and more, is bringing these rich themes to Somerset House with Making A Rukus! Black Queer Histories Through Love And Resistance. Two hundred archive materials, contemporary artworks – including some commissioned just for the exhibition – will walk through the jubilant, complicated, and deeply personal experiences of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans activism and creativity. The multi-disciplinary installation displays a celebratory snapshot of queer history and contemporary art, moving from film to artist; collaborations to community; then club scenes and music culture, and back to film and video.
Silk Roads, British Museum
Silk Roads at the British Museum maps the complex web of trade route networks as spice merchants and silk traders journeyed from east to west, across more than 500 years. These paths are mapped out by camels and foot passengers alike, through barren desserts and hostile settings, and paint an image of the dialogues between Asia, Africa, and Europe. Over 29 national and international museums, galleries, and institutions have loaned artefacts from across the word to help paint this comprehensive snapshot of a multi-continent-spanning story.
Lead image: Tracey Emin I followed you to the end. 19 September –10 November 2024. White Cube Bermondsey, Tracey Emin The End of Love2024. Acrylic on canvas 202.9 x 280.2 cm | 79 7/8 x 110 5/16 in. 202.9 x 280.2 cm © Tracey Emin. Photo © White Cube (Eva Herzog)
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