24 London art exhibitions to see in Frieze Week 2026
Nothing beats London during Frieze Week. Every October, an infectious buzz settles over the city as galleries, institutions, brands and even bars and clubs all throw their weight behind art and culture. As we gear up for the return of Frieze and Frieze Masters to Regent's Park from 14 to 18 October, we wanted to whet your cultural appetite by drawing your attention to a variety of exhibitions to sink your teeth into that go far beyond the fair’s traditional white tent set-up.
Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor, Ha Makom, 2026. © Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved, DACS, 2026. Photo: Dave Morgan.
#FLODown: Although not technically a Frieze exhibition, this Frieze Week marks your last chance to catch Anish Kapoor’s solo exhibition at the Hayward Gallery before it closes to the public. For the staunch fans that remember the artist’s first ever show with the gallery back in 1998, Southbank Centre are asking you to think bigger as this time, Kapoor has taken over the entirety of the gallery inside and out as mirrored steel sculptures warp the room and the viewer in it while vantablack objects swallow light, and voids open up in floors and walls. Overwhelming in scale and feeling, this is a show that must be experienced in person. You really do have to see it to believe it.
Date: until 18 October. Location: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. Price: £22. Concessions available. Discover more.
Lawrence Perry: Careless Rapture
Installation view Careless Rapture by Lawrence Perry. ©LBF Contemporary, 2026.
#FLODown: If you’re more interested in what London’s emerging artists have to offer this Frieze Week, we encourage you to turn your attention to Lawrence Perry’s Careless Rapture at LBF Contemporary; an exhibition that seamlessly blends Perry’s photorealistic painting style with his appreciation for machinist flaws as the artist chooses to hone in on the kind of faults that cameras and phones have spent decades ironing out. By hand-painting motion blur, blown highlights, starbursts and film grain, Perry’s paintings stand as a reaction against today’s repetitive generative image-making.
Date: until 22 October. Location: LBF Contemporary, 13 Tottenham Mews, Fitzrovia, London W1T 4AQ. Price: free. Discover more.
Curtain Up
Benjamin Wilson, Portrait of a Lady with a Mask and Cherries, 1753, oil on canvas, 91.7 x 70.7 cm, DPG593.
#FLODown: Theatre has long been a part of Dulwich Picture Gallery's story (Dulwich College founder Edward Alleyn was one of Jacobean theatre’s most notable actors), which makes the gallery’s current exhibition Curtain Up a must-see for all whose minds and hearts are split between theatre and art. Rare theatrical portraits from the Gallery’s Collection, including actors, playwrights, costume and scenery designers, are placed in dialogue with contemporary artists such as Rene Matić, Lulu Bennett and Sin Wai Kin, tracing how costume, performance and queerness have always been entangled with questions of identity, on stage and off it.
Date: until 25 October. Location: Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, Dulwich Village, London, SE21 7AD. Price: £10. Discover more.
This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte
This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte, installation view, 2026. Artwork © Dana Schutz; © 2026 ADAGP, Paris and DACS; © Jill Mulleady; © Talia Chetrit; © Anna Weyant; © Alex Da Corte; © Isabelle Albuquerque; © Rachel Harrison; © Mona Hatoum; © Nairy Baghramian; © Jordan Wolfson; © Jeff Koons; © Sarah Lucas. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian
#FLODown: It’s been over 100 years since the birth of surrealism, and the art world still can’t get enough. Each year, a whole host of surrealist-inspired exhibitions pop up around Europe and this Frieze Week, it’s Gagosian turn to reflect on one of the 20th century’s most talked about art movements by spotlighting the enigmatic master himself: none other than René Magritte. Organised in collaboration with the Fondation Magritte, This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte examines the artist’s legacy by juxtaposing a significant amount of Magritte paintings, works on paper, and sculpture with works by more than forty artists of different generations, spotlighting the paradoxical aspects of Magritte’s practice as well as his enduring influence that refuses to die. Curated by Jasper Sharp and Bernard Lagrange, the exhibition marks 90 years since the International Surrealist Exhibition in London, and 20 years since LACMA's landmark Magritte show. Thought you’d seen it all when it comes to the Surrealist master? Think again.
Date: until 12 December. Location: Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1K 3QD. Price: free. Discover more.
Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis
Isaac Julien, Telepathy, The Cosmic House (All That Changes You. Metamorphosis), 2025. Inkjet print on Ilford Gold Fibre Gloss mounted on aluminium, 110 x 147 cm ; 43 1/4 x 57 7/8 in. © Isaac Julien. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro.
#FLODown: As well as a filmmaker and installation artist, Isaac Julien is also a weaver of sonic tapestries, many of which are wrung with hidden meanings, poetic references and historical interpretations of both fact and fiction. The best example of this is his moving-image work All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, currently on view at Charles Jencks' Cosmic House, itself one of the film's locations. A single-screen reworking of a piece first conceived for Palazzo Te's 500th anniversary, the film follows two time-travelling women, inspired by Octavia Butler and Naomi Mitchison, through Renaissance frescoes, Californian redwoods and glass houses in Napa and the Cotswolds, meditating on transformation as a condition of life itself.
Date: until 18 December. Location: Cosmic House, 19 Lansdowne Walk, Holland Park, London W11 3AH. Price: £17. Concessions available. Discover more.
Stevie Dix: Vyvyan
Stevie Dix, Maternal grief, 2025. Oil and wax on Belgian linen, artist-made frame. 19.5 x 25.5 x 2.7 cm, 7 3/4 x 10 x 1 in. (SD0101)
#FLODown: Presenting the work of painter Stevie Dix, Vyvyan at Hannah Barry Gallery riffs off the compounded tension that arises when life is momentarily suspended between joy (categorised by the impending arrival of Dix’s newborn son) and grief (while heavily pregnant, Dix unexpectedly lost her mother). Reflecting on the two-week period in which both these events collided, Vyvyan shines a spotlight on the imagery, objects, and symbols connecting birth and death, representative of how objects can sometimes hold stronger memories than memory itself.
Date: 1 October - 14 November. Location: Hannah Barry, 4 Holly Grove, London SE15 5DF. Price: free. Discover more.
Es Devlin: Other Worlds
Es Devlin photographed Es Devlin: Other Worlds at the Design Museum. Photo credit Luke Hayes.
#FLODown: Tim Walker isn’t the only creative who has mastered the art of world-building. Use this Frieze Week as a chance to visit Europe's first-ever retrospective of industry-beloved stage designer Es Devlin as Kensington’s The Design Museum brings together 30 years of a genre-defying practice spanning stage design, sculpture, language and light, from the London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony to sets for the Super Bowl and The Lehman Trilogy. A replica of Devlin's studio, an archive of early sketches and diaries, and the mesmerising Infinite Library installation trace how everything she makes begins with drawing, proving this exhibition to be essential viewing for anyone interested in design, theatre or spectacle.
Date: 2 October - 4 April, 2027. Location: Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, Kensington, London W8 6AG. Price: £21. Concessions available. Discover more.
Ossie Clark + Celia Birtwell
Gala Mitchell wearing Ossie Clark's 'Acapulco Gold' chiffon dress, photographed by Celia Birtwell in 1969.
#FLODown: The 1990s isn’t the only fashion-focused decade getting a second look this Autumn; the 1960s has also found itself under the spotlight thanks to Bermondsey’s Fashion and Textile Museum staging an exhibition dedicated to designers Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, revisiting the years when Clark (frequently referred to as the “King of King’s Road”) worked closely with Birtwell, best known for her prints swinging ‘60s prints on crêpe, silk and chiffon. The pair were married for five short years from 1969 until 1974 and, during that time, created a legacy that continues to shape style today thanks to a client list that boasted the likes of David Bowie, Bianca Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Elizabeth Taylor and even Jimi Hendrix. Over 120 garments from a private collection together with loans from Birtwell will make up the exhibition.
Date: 2 October - 11 April, 2027. Location: 83 Bermondsey St, London SE1 3XF. Price: £12.65. Concessions available. Discover more.
Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK
(Left) Photograph of Edward Carpenter and his partner George Merrill, c.1900. Digital image provided by The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester. (Right) The Ghetto, 43 Kitchen, 1993, Tom Hunter. The Cosmic.
#FLODown: This October, the William Morris Gallery is inviting you to step inside the homes that changed British art and activism for good. From William Morris's Red House (famous for being the birthplace of the Arts and Crafts movement) to the Bloomsbury’s Charleston base, Benton End, Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage and the anarchist punk commune Dial House, this touring exhibition traces two centuries of people who defied convention by imagining new ways of living. Acknowledging the privileged roots many of these ideas sprouted from, the exhibition also considers the role that money and class have played in providing access to confront social norms, asking: who exactly gets to break the rules?
Date: 3 October - 28 March 2027. Location: Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, London E17 4PP. Price: free. Discover more.
Lumps and Bumps
(Lumps & Bumps/ Rose Easton) Sylvie Fleury, Wow 4, 2006. PU-foam-object, plaster, fiberglass, lacquer. 90 x 65 x 17 cm, 35 3⁄8 x 25 5⁄8 x 6 3⁄4 in. Courtesy the artist and Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin
#FLODown: Anyone well-versed in courting the madness that Frieze Week brings also knows art is only half the story; fashion too has earned its place during London’s busiest art week. Merging the two together is Rose Easton, whose upcoming exhibition Lumps and Bumps borrows its name from the seminal S/S 1997 collection by Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, who sent her models down the runway in silhouettes that protested against fashion’s adoration of a shrinking frame. Anchoring its roots in that now famed collection, Rose Easton gathers five artists (Dogperson39, Sarah Benslimane, Sylvie Fleury, Charlotte Kingsnorth and Caitlin MacQueen) whose work shares in Kawakubo's appetite for the ungainly and the unresolved, reminding us that not only does the Japanese designer’s most disruptive collection still have plenty left to say, but so do the contemporary artists it inspired.
Date: 3 October - 12 December. Location: Rose Easton, 223 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 0EL. Price: free. Discover more.
House of Bandits
Victoria Ruiz, We Knew the World in Fragments of Color. Copyright © Victoria Ruiz
#FLODown: Building on the success of last year’s House of Bandits pop-up at Selfridges, the Sarabande Foundation gallery has its sights set on the iconic department store once more, where a selection of the foundation’s in-house residents and alumni artists will be exhibiting and selling a plethora of paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures. Artists including Daisy Collingridge, Amelia Cross, George Wilkin, Rizza Zahid and Jack Laver will be featured; many of whom additionally have exhibitions in London during Frieze Week (Amelia Cross at Incubator and George Wilkin at Pippi Houldsworth Gallery). Interested in how Alexander McQueen’s creative legacy lives on? Few places will be bursting with as much creative spirit this Frieze Week.
Date: 5 - 18 October. Location: Selfridges’ Duke Street entrance at 40 Duke Street, London, W1U 1AT. Price: free. Discover more.
This Must Be the Place: Artists for Whitechapel Gallery
Lenz Geerk, Scent II,2025. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo. Artwork included in This Must Be the Place, Whitechapel Gallery, 2026.
#FLODown: Marking its 125th anniversary and lifelong mission of introducing its many audiences to groundbreaking artists and practices from across the globe, Whitechapel Gallery has commissioned new and recent work by 23 painters from across the European, North American, Asian and African continents. Staged in the gallery that first showed Picasso, Rothko and Kahlo in Britain, This Must Be the Place: Artists for Whitechapel Gallery offers a rare, free look at a global generation defining painting now as much as it does a chance to support the institution's future. All works are offered for sale, with proceeds directly supporting Whitechapel Gallery, the artists and their representative galleries.
Date: 7 October - 8 November. Location: Whitechapel Gallery, Historic Assembly Room, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX. Price: free. Discover more.
A Different Kind of Pop: Giorgos Ioannou’s Works 1960s – 1970s
Lenz Geerk, Scent II,2025. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo. Artwork included in This Must Be the Place, Whitechapel Gallery, 2026.
#FLODown: To celebrate the centenary of Giorgos Ioannou's birth, Mayfair’s The Hellenic Centre will be exhibiting more than thirty paintings, made between the late 1960s and early '70s under the Greek military junta, to reveal an artist who played with the language of Pop and comic-book imagery as a reaction to his country’s censorship laws during the period. Although distinctly comic in their tone, Ioannou's images also incorporate personal memory, folk tradition and political trauma, separating the artist from his American counterparts.
Date: 8 October - 19 November. Location: 16-18 Paddington St, London W1U 5AS. Price: free. Discover more.
Our Bodies Have Been Bridges
Lenz Geerk, Scent II,2025. Courtesy of the artist and Massimo De Carlo. Artwork included in This Must Be the Place, Whitechapel Gallery, 2026.
#FLODown: Curated by Mark Sealy and Bindi Vora, Our Bodies Have Been Bridges at Easton London’s Autograph gallery brings together three photographers (Laura Aguilar, Tarrah Krajnak and Koyoltzintli), all of whom are working at the meeting point of indigenous knowledge and feminist thought. Across staged self-portraits, ancestral landscapes and fragmented family history, each artist sets out to ask how the body holds memory: Aguilar's nude self-portraits reclaim Chicana and lesbian identity, Krajnak retraces a lost Peruvian lineage, and Koyoltzintli's photographs fold the female body into the land itself. Together, their work reframes the body as a bridge between the personal and the ancestral.
Date: 8 October - 13 February, 2027. Location: Autograph, Rivington Place, London, EC2A 3BA. Price: free. Discover more.
The 90s: Art and Fashion
Juergen Teller, Young Pink Kate, London 1998. © Juergen Teller, All rights Reserved.
#FLODown: Anyone looking for a healthy dose of nostalgia this October will be able to find it at Tate Britain, whose upcoming exhibition, The 90s: Art and Fashion, is curated by one of the industry’s own: Edward Enninful. Seen through one of the most successful fashion editors’ eyes, the exhibition reflects on the potent cultural force that emerged during the 1990s as long-held hierarchies were dismantled and rulebooks were ripped up by everyone who was someone, resulting in iconic images by photographers including Juergen Teller, David Sims and Corinne Day. Indelible artwork by YBAs Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas, as well as artists Steve McQueen and Yinka Shonibare, will also be on show, as will pieces from era-defining collections by Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and John Galliano.
Date: 8 October - 14 February, 2027. Location: Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG. Price: £22. Concessions available. Discover more.
Rebecca Warren: There Will Be Another You
There Will Be Another You, Rebecca Warren. Image courtesy of Maureen Paley.
#FLODown: Rebecca Warren OBE will be taking over both of Maureen Paley's Bethnal Green spaces with a new body of work reflecting on the topics of time, mortality and the many versions of ourselves. At the centre is a life-size bronze reclining female nude with two right arms that could be melting or morphing, depending on how you view it. Louche, witty and a little unnerving, the exhibition hints at a soon-to-arrive future in which we can self-upload our brain's contents to a new container that feels like us but is distinctly not us.
Date: 9 October - 12 December. Location: Maureen Paley, 60 Three Colts Lane, Bethnal Green, London E2 6GQ. Price: free. Discover more.
Alex Margo Arden: Nothing Personal
Alex Margo Arden, Signed Otherwise, 2026. Courtesy the artist and the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation
#FLODown: Following up on Alex Margo Arden receiving the inaugural Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Prize at Frieze London last year, the British artist is back, this time restaging the personal property of Amy Winehouse in an exhibition curated by Vittoria de Franchis, titled Nothing Personal. at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation. Research is the aim of the game when it comes to Arden’s practice, which spans performance, sculpture and painting, and so if you count yourself a loyal Winehouse fanatic, you certainly won’t be disappointed. In signature Arden fashion, the exhibition examines the effects of celebrity ownership and death on the circulation of everyday objects, transforming them into almost sacred sites of fetishisation and speculation, much of which reigns supreme when it comes to Amy Winehouse.
Date: 9 October - 23 January, 2027. Location: 8 Chelsea Embankment, London SW3 4LE. Price: free. Discover more.
Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends
Fairyland Parade, Tim Walker. Joe Sweeney, Matthew Keller, Harry Keita, Bolly Illusion, James Corbin, Oliver-Bijan Daryoush, Jack Newman, Yos Clark and Joseph O’Rourke, London, 2023.
#FLODown: Tim Walker has spent his entire career pouring every ounce of his imagination into worlds that don’t exist. You only have to look at one of his many kept scrapbooks, all of which were on show at the fashion photographer’s V&A exhibition Tim Walker: Wonderful Things in 2020. Didn’t catch it? Don’t fret; there’s another chance to peer into Tim Walker’s fantastical world thanks to the National Portrait Gallery’s upcoming exhibition Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends. Said to be the photographer’s ‘most personal exhibition to date’, the monumental showcase brings together 250 previously unseen portraits by Walker in an effort to reclaim the word ‘fairy’, turning the homophobic slur into a symbol of pride, joy, and resistance.
Date: 9 October 2026 - 7 February 2027. Location: National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Place, London WC2H 0HE. Price: £23. Concessions Available.Discover more.
Charles Atlas
Charles Atlas, DANCENOISE. Video still. Courtesy the artist and Champ Lacomb Galerie.
#FLODown: If you’re a regular on the London exhibitions circuit, you may be familiar with the name Charles Atlas, who, after years of existing in the shadows of his contemporaries Michael Clark and Leigh Bowery (both of whom have had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern and Barbican in the last five years), is finally being given his flowers. Highlighting Atlas' enduring influence on contemporary art, dance, and queer culture is Champ Lacombe, who has announced a solo exhibition of the artist’s work in London for the first time in 18 years. Consider yourself a fan of all things performance art and dance? This one’s for you.
Date: 12 October - 12 December. Location: Champ Lacombe, London, 1 Woburn Walk, WC1H 0JJ. Price: free. Discover more.
Georg Baselitz: The Heroes 1965 - 1966
Georg Baselitz, 'B.j.M.C, – Bonjour Monsieur Courbet,' 1965, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm. Photo by Ulrich Ghezzi. © Georg Baselitz 2026. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London · Paris · Salzburg · Milan · Seoul.
#FLODown: In 1965 and 1966, a 27-year-old Georg Baselitz painted around sixty monumental figures: barefoot partisans, rebels, shepherds and painters in rags and torn uniforms. They stand in ravaged landscapes, their brokenness a stark comparison to how a hero was depicted in Germany’s post-war era. They are aimless, distant and defeated, forlorn in their expressions. ‘They’re not heroes swinging their fists,’ stated Baselitz at the time. ‘They look broken, destroyed, ragged, tattered. And that’s how I wanted them.’ Baselitz may have died in April earlier this year, but his Heroes series still holds up, even more profoundly than it did then, for saying what a nation preferred to keep hidden. As fascism rises once more, in Germany and across Europe, it’s worth remembering who Baselitz’s heroes really were.
Date: 13 October - 18 December 2026. Location: Thaddeus Ropac, Ely House, 37 Dover Street, Mayfair, London W1S 4NJ. Price: free. Discover more.
Reena Saini Kallat: Elsewhere Is Already Here
Reena Saini Kallat, Siamese Trees (Pine-iscus), 2018-2019. Electric wires, metal, circuit boards and fittings, 66 x 51 cm | 26 x 20 in. Unique variation of 3 + 1 AP.
#FLODown: Some artists want their work to provide fantasy and an escape from normality. Others respond to the world around them, bringing humanitarian issues into focus through their practice. Indian artist Reena Saini Kallat sits in the latter camp, proving that her Richard Saltoun exhibition Elsewhere Is Already Here is for the activists as much as it is for the art fanatics. Bringing together drawings, photographs, sculptures and video works, the exhibition looks at borders, noting the ways they divide land, people and natural resources. Her interest in migration and displacement comes from the artist’s own experience, shaped by the aftershocks of partition, with the works on show asking how boundaries shape movement, belonging, and how easily they can be crossed.
Date: 13 October - 19 December. Location: Richard Saltoun, 41 Dover St, London W1S 4NS. Price: free. Discover more.
Cindy Sherman: Fabric Matrons
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #710, 2026. Chromogenic color print. 101.6 x 152.4 cm / 40 x 60 in. © 2026 Cindy Sherman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NYCourtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
#FLODown: For just shy of half a century, Cindy Sherman has probed the construction of identity in the age of celebrity, playing with visual and cultural codes to establish new ways of looking and even existing. Further exploring this idea is the artist’s latest London exhibition Fabric Matrons at Hauser & Wirth, which marks a sophisticated evolution in Sherman’s repeated engagement with fashion imagery, as many of the works involved incorporate fabrics and other elements drawn from Chanel’s extensive archives. More than designer accessories, when in the hands of Cindy Sherman, these fabric swatches become tools, used for the sole purpose of continuing Sherman’s decades-long examination of celebrity, beauty, ageing and the uneasy ways women are seen.
Date: 13 October - 23 December. Location: Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET. Price: free. Discover more.
Light & Magic: The Birth of Art Photography
Long Chin-San, Riverside Spring. 1942, The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the V&A, acquired with the generous assistance of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund © Courtesy the Estate of the Artist.
#FLODown: Thanks to the invention of smartphones, photography has never been a more inexpensive and accessible habit. But what about its history? Wonder no more as a new exhibition at Tate Modern traces the roots of art photography from Pictorialism in the 1910s to the clubs and salons five decades later that shaped the movement's international development. Rare books, journals and magazines revealing the journey of how photographic ideas circulated globally and took shape will also be on show, including examples such as Camera Work (founded by Alfred Stieglitz in 1903) and USSR in Construction (1930s).
Date: 14 October - 21 February, 2027. Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: £20. Concessions available. Discover more.
PAWILON
Marcin Dudek, Klatka VI Here, 2026. Acrylic paint, wood, steel, image transfer, paper mâché, medical tape, UV varnish; 46 x 74 x 8 cm, 18 1/8 x 29 1/8 x 3 1/8 in. (open); 46 x 24.5 x 4 cm, 18 1/8 x 9 5/8 x 1 5/8 in.
#FLODown: Pawilon may not ring familiar to everyone, but for artist Marcin Dudek it brings a nostalgia as overwhelming as it is comforting. The word gives its name to the artist’s seventh exhibition with Edel Assanti, opening during Frieze Week, and refers to a local supermarket on the Kraków council estate where he grew up as the Eastern Bloc dissolved. Reflecting on this period, Dudek has fragmented the site for the exhibition, using memory, with all its gaps and distortions, to show how larger economic and social forces play out in everyday places.
Date: 16 October - 12 December. Location: Edel Assanti, 1B Little Titchfield Street, Fitzrovia, London W1W 7BU. Price: free. Discover more.
British Art Fair, Image credit Guy Bell. courtesy of British Art Fair
Ceremony : Future Ritual: Pianka Pärna by Devika Bilimoria.
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