The best things to do in London this October
Frieze isn’t the only thing worth braving the rain for this month. Here are the best things to do in London this October.
Frieze London and Frieze Masters, Regent’s Park NW1
The magazine turned international art fair makes its annual visit to Regent’s Park between the 3rd and 6th October this year, with all the pomp, posturing and pontificating you’ve come to expect (and love). Still, 160 of the world’s leading galleries representing more than 1000 artists means there’s something for everyone and, with the work shown at Frieze Masters spanning thousands of years of artistic output, you’d be hard-pressed not to find something worth investing in. Find a way into the preview night for the people-watching experience ne plus ultra.
Beyond Bauhaus – Modernism in Britain 1933-66, RIBA, W1B
Britain’s Bauhaus moment came in the interwar years of the 1930s, when the school’s figureheads, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, decamped to London and continued their tradition-breaking work. The legacy of that output will be explored at this exhibition at RIBA, dedicated to modernist houses across the country, showcasing original, and rarely seen, material from by Gropius, Breuer and disciples F. R. S. York and E. Maxwell Fry.
British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, SW3
Running alongside Frieze at the Saatchi Gallery is the British Art Fair, now in its 31st year. Billed as the only fair dedicated to modern British art, you can expect work from all the big hitters of the last century (L. S. Lowry, Henry Moore, William Scott, Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, to name a few) presented over the floors of the gallery.
Hyundai Commission: Kara Walker, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, SE1
“The Turbine Hall is like a grand prize. You’ve been offered this gargantuan space and it’s all yours. It’s irresistible,” the African American artist Kara Walker told The Guardian about taking over the Tate Modern’s 85 foot-tall hall. While details about the site-specific work that will be unveiled on 2nd October are scarce, many are expecting Walker’s thought-provoking explorations of race, gender, sexuality and violence made manifest on a giant scale.
24/7: A Wake-Up Call for our Non-Stop World, Somerset House, WC2R
You spend all day on your computer, trying to get all your work done, but you still spend an extra hour at it. At home, you stare at the cold blue light of your phone before trying, then failing, to fall asleep. You pick up your phone again.
Know the feeling? Well, turns out you’re not alone. Explore more than 50 works in a multi-sensory exhibition dedicated to exploring our ‘always-on’ culture in which the ‘blurred boundaries between day and night, work and leisure, human and machine, the individual and the collective’ will be picked apart by an array of international artists.
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