Art exhibitions to see across the UK during Frieze Week 2025
The week typically referred to as Frieze Week, when Frieze London and Frieze Masters take place in Regent’s Park, this year running from 15 to 19 October 2025, marks one of the most important periods in the UK art calendar. It features not only these major fairs but also a host of additional art fairs, gallery openings, and exciting exhibitions. This period brings an influx of collectors, artists, curators, and art lovers to London, but the artistic energy extends far beyond the capital. Across the UK, numerous remarkable exhibitions coincide with the week, from Marina Abramović’s powerful durational performance exploring Balkan heritage at Aviva Studios in Manchester, to Helen Chadwick’s provocative retrospective at The Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield, to Lubaina Himid’s intimate collaboration at Kettle’s Yard, and to a dedicated celebration of J.M.W. Turner’s legacy in Manchester. The range of shows reflects the depth and richness of contemporary and historical art practices. Here is our guide to 16 exhibitions worth travelling further afield for during Frieze Week.
Click here for our guide to 30+ art exhibitions to see in London during Frieze Week.
Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic
Marina Abramović, archival performance from the series Balkan Erotic Epic in Serbia, 2005. © Marina Abramović. Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives.
#FLODown: Marina Abramović’s Balkan Erotic Epic will premiere this autumn in Manchester as a four-hour durational performance exploring the eroticism, spirituality, and folklore of her Balkan homeland. Featuring over 70 performers across 13 intense scenes, the show invites audiences to freely move through Aviva Studios and experience ritualistic dances, music, and storytelling. Known as the world’s most influential performance artist, Abramović pushes boundaries with raw and intimate depictions of body and spirit, asking profound questions about the purpose and power of the human body. This bold and unfiltered production contains nudity and graphic scenes, designed for audiences aged 18 and over.
Date: 9 – 19 October 2025. Location: The Social & Warehouse, Aviva Studios, Manchester, Water Street, M3 4JQ. Price: Previews from £40, standard from £50; concessions at 50% discount. Book now
Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely: Myths & Machines
#FLODown: The first UK exhibition dedicated to Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) and Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) is on show at Hauser & Wirth Somerset. Organised in collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation, Myths & Machines brings together over three decades of collaboration between two leading figures of twentieth-century art. The exhibition features Saint Phalle’s Shooting Paintings, her brightly coloured Nanas, monumental outdoor sculptures and works of art décor, alongside Tinguely’s kinetic machines and “anti-machines” made from scrap and found materials, which question the role of technology and modern society. Key collaborative works, including La Grande Tête (1988) and Pallas Athéna (le chariot) (1989), reveal how their practices intersected, while through sculpture, performance, film and large-scale projects, the exhibition traces how both artists redefined the possibilities of contemporary art.
Date: 17 May 2025 – 1 February 2026. Location: Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL. Price: Free. https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/niki-de-saint-phalle-and-jean-tinguely-myths-and-machines/
Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures
Helen Chadwick with Piss Flowers in 1994. Photograph: Kippa Matthews
#FLODown: Helen Chadwick’s major retrospective Life Pleasures offers the first comprehensive look at her groundbreaking work in over 25 years. The exhibition traces Chadwick’s artistic journey from her early piece In the Kitchen (1977) to her iconic Piss Flowers (1991–92). Known for blending beauty with unconventional and often provocative materials, including bodily fluids, meat, flowers, and chocolate, Chadwick challenged traditional art taboos with a feminist and humorous perspective. This show will celebrate her innovative use of materials and technologies, highlighting her lasting influence on British and international contemporary art and feminist discourse.
Date: 17 May – 26 October 2025. Location: The Hepworth Wakefield, Dairyhouse Hill, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF1 5AW. Price: £13 / £11 (concessions), free for members, Wakefield District residents, and under 18s. Book now
Suzanne Treister: Prophetic Dreaming
Suzanne Treister, Fictional Videogame Stills/Are You Dreaming? 1991-1992. Courtesy the artist, Annely Juda Fine Art, London and P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York
#FLODown: Suzanne Treister’s upcoming exhibition at Modern Art Oxford will explore fantastical narratives and the hidden forces shaping our world through her innovative investigations of technology’s impact on society. A pioneer of digital media and early internet art, Treister uses a variety of media, including video, digital technologies, photography, drawing, and watercolour, to reveal complex connections between power, identity, knowledge, and alternative belief systems.
Date: 4 October 2025 – 25 January 2026. Location: Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BP. Price: Free entry (No booking required). Book now
Marie Antoinette Style
Film still from Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. Photo courtesy of I WANT CANDY LLC. and Zoetrope Corp.
#FLODown: Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A South Kensington will be the UK’s first exhibition dedicated to the iconic French queen and her influence on fashion and culture. Showcasing 250 objects, including rare loans never before seen outside France, the exhibition will feature personal items such as Marie Antoinette’s silk slippers, jewels, and her final written note, alongside lavish fragments of court dress and intimate objects from Versailles. Contemporary couture by designers like Dior, Chanel, Vivienne Westwood, and Moschino, as well as costumes from Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning film Marie Antoinette, will trace the queen’s legacy through centuries of design and media.
Date: 20 September 2025 - 22 March 2026. Location: V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. Price: from £23 - £25. Book now
Jordy Kerwick: One to Give. One to Take Away (Unum dare. Unum ut auferat)
Jordy Kerwick, Pre Just Kids, 2023. Courtesy of Vigo. Gallery and the artist. Photo © Stephanie Bird.
#FLODown: Jordy Kerwick’s first UK museum solo exhibition, One to Give. One to Take Away, opens in September at Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s Weston Gallery, with works shown indoors and across the landscape. New sculptures and large-scale paintings inspired by mythology and folklore feature fantastical creatures and hybrid beasts, presented in Kerwick’s bold, tactile style that reimagines contemporary mythmaking.
Date: 27 September 2025 – 22 February 2026. Location: Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield, WF4 4LG. Price: Standard tickets under £10 (£11 with Gift Aid), free for under 18s, free parking. Book now
Turner: In Light and Shade
Storm in the Pass of St. Gotthard, Switzerland, 1845, Watercolour. Credit: J.M.W. Turner © the Whitworth, The University of Manchester.
#FLODown: At The Whitworth in Manchester, Turner: In Light and Shade marks the 250th anniversary of J.M.W. Turner’s birth with a major exhibition exploring the legendary British landscape artist’s work and technique. The show focuses on Turner’s remarkable but often overlooked series of landscape prints, the Liber Studiorum (“Book of Studies”), created between 1807 and 1819 at the peak of his fame. On show are all seventy-one of Turner’s published prints alongside a selection of his watercolours from the Whitworth’s collection and important loans from public and private collections. The exhibition highlights how Turner translated his mastery of colour and atmosphere in painting into print using line, tone, and negative space. Last shown at the Whitworth over a century ago, this exhibition offers a fresh perspective on Turner’s artistic legacy and lasting influence on landscape art.
Date: 7 February – 2 November 2025. Location: The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6ER. Price: Free. Book now
Nour Jaouda
Nour Jaouda, Dust That Never Settles (2024). Image courtesy the artist and Union
#FLODown: Libyan artist Nour Jaouda presents her first institutional solo exhibition at Spike Island in Bristol, showcasing her most ambitious work to date. Through multi-layered textile pieces that blend painting, sculpture, and installation, Jaouda explores the fluidity of cultural identity by creating ‘landscapes of memory’ inspired by her childhood in Libya and life between Cairo and London. Her intricate tapestries, formed through a meditative process of dying, cutting, and reconstructing fabric, evoke spectral presences and fragmented histories. Central to the exhibition is a large tent-like installation inspired by the traditional Egyptian Khayamiya textile, serving as a memorial space that invites reflection on uprooted indigenous landscapes. Collaborating with master craftsmen from Cairo, Jaouda combines personal narratives with broader social histories, examining movement, belonging, and the sacred act of creating shelter.
Date: 27 September 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: Spike Island, Bristol, 133 Cumberland Road, Bristol, BS1 6UX. Price: Free. Book now
Lubaina Himid with Magda Stawarska: Another Chance Encounter
Lubaina Himid, ‘Favours For Years To Come’, from the series ‘How Can I Help You?’, 2025, acrylic and charcoal on canvas. Courtesy Hollybush Gardens, London and Greene Naftali, New York. Photo: Gavin Renshaw.
#FLODown: Lubaina Himid, one of the UK’s most celebrated contemporary artists, presents new figurative paintings alongside a collaborative installation with Magda Stawarska at Kettle’s Yard. The exhibition reflects on absence and memory, examining who is excluded from life stories, how gaps in narratives are filled, and the significance of objects left behind as traces of the past. Building on their 2020 work Blue Grid Test, the installation draws inspiration from the correspondence between writer Sophie Brzeska and artist Nina Hamnett. Subtle interventions within the Kettle’s Yard house, including a large-scale painting, allow art to be experienced in an intimate domestic setting.
Date: 12 July – 2 November 2025. Location: Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, Castle Street, Cambridge, CB3 0AQ. Price: Free entry, booking recommended. Book now
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years
Andy Goldsworthy with his sculpture Oak Passage. Photo: Stuart Armitt
#FLODown: The largest indoor exhibition of internationally acclaimed artist Andy Goldsworthy’s career is currently on show at the Royal Scottish Academy. Featuring over 200 works spanning five decades, the exhibition Fifty Years showcases Goldsworthy’s inventive use of natural materials such as clay, leaves, snow, and stone. He transforms the RSA’s iconic spaces into an environment that explores humanity’s complex relationship with the land. Highlights include large-scale site-specific installations, from a massive cracked clay wall to rusted barbed wire stretching across a room, alongside drawings, photographs, films, and archival material dating back to the 1970s. This ambitious show offers a rare opportunity to experience the beauty, danger, and raw power of Goldsworthy’s work in one place, marking a milestone in his extraordinary artistic journey.
Date: until 2 November 2025. Location: Royal Scottish Academy, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL. Price: £5–£19, Friends free. Book now
Sea Inside
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Devonian Period, 1992. Copyright: Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy of Lisson Gallery
#FLODown: The Sainsbury Centre in Norwich presents Sea Inside, an exhibition that investigates the physical, psychological, and imaginary spaces of the ocean. Curated by Dr Sarah Wade and Dr Pandora Syperek, it brings together experimental works across diverse media by artists including Shuvinai Ashoona, Marcus Coates, Evan Ifekoya, Laure Prouvost, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. From intimate shell like enclosures to vast maritime journeys, the show considers humanity’s complex relationships with the sea, including seafaring traditions, Indigenous knowledge, and the trauma of forced crossings. Rather than emphasising only the ocean’s vastness, the works reimagine it on a human scale, exploring watery origins and the objects drawn from the deep. Part of the six month season Can the Seas Survive Us?, the exhibition offers a multi sensory reflection on our shared marine world.
Date: 7 June – 26 October 2025. Location: Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ. Price: Pay If and What You Can. Book now
Garden Futures: Designing with Nature
Stefano Boeri, Bosco Verticale, Milan, 2014 © Stefano Boeri Architetti, Photo: The Blink Fish, 2018Ai Weiwei: A New Chatpter
#FLODown: Garden Futures: Designing with Nature at the V&A Dundee offers a sensory journey through the history and future of modern garden design. The exhibition highlights the extraordinary and everyday significance of gardens, from windowsill plants and allotments to manicured lawns and unexpected urban green spaces. Showcasing groundbreaking designs by visionaries such as Piet Oudolf and Derek Jarman, alongside works by artists, writers, and designers including Duncan Grant, Jamaica Kincaid, and William Morris, it reveals how gardens inspire creativity, nurture wellbeing, and reflect cultural values. Drawing on examples from around the world, the exhibition celebrates gardens as spaces of beauty, innovation, and personal expression, most importantly, encouraging visitors to cultivate their own green sanctuaries.
Date: On now – 25 January 2026. Location: V&A Dundee, 1 Riverside Esplanade, Dundee DD1 4EZ. Price: from
£7.50 – £16, book in advance for £1 discount. Members and kids go free. Book now
The Sunken Boat: A Glimpse into Past Histories
Anna Boghiguian, The Sunken Boat: A glimpse into past histories, 2025. Installation view. Courtesy Turner Contemporary. Photo: Thierry Bal.
#FLODown: The Sunken Boat: A Glimpse into Past Histories at Turner Contemporary in Margate by Egyptian-Canadian artist Anna Boghiguian examines the sea’s pivotal role in shaping histories of labour, trade, ecological collapse, and political conflict. Renowned for her large-scale installations combining painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, and sound, Boghiguian weaves together her own experiences with historical research and political commentary to address colonialism, migration, and climate change. This new installation reflects on maritime histories and their connections to contemporary crises, from rising sea levels to tensions over undersea communication cables, and is presented alongside earlier works such as The Salt Traders (2015) and The Square, the Line and the Ruler (2019).
Date: 14 June – 26 October 2025. Location: Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous, Margate CT9 1HG. Price: Free. turnercontemporary.org
This Is What You Get
Wall of Eyes, Stanley Donwood & Thom Yorke, 2023, tempera, gouache and gesso on linen © Stanley Donwood & Thom Yorke (used for The Smile, Wall of Eyes album cover, 2024)
#FLODown: This Is What You Get at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford explores the visual art of Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke alongside the iconic imagery of Radiohead. Featuring over 180 objects from their 30-year collaboration, the exhibition includes original paintings for album covers, digital compositions, etchings, unpublished drawings, and lyrics from their sketchbooks. Developed and curated with Donwood and Yorke, it reveals their experimentation with early technology and the evolution of images behind Radiohead’s legendary albums and Yorke’s solo projects. This unique display offers insight into the creative forces behind some of the most influential music of recent decades.
Date: 6 August 2025 – 11 January 2026. Location: Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2PH. Price: from £16.20. Concessions available. Book now
Izumi Kato
Izumi Kato, Untitled 2024. Photo by Kei Okano. Copyright Izumi Kato. Courtesy the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery and Perrotin
#FLODown: The first UK institutional exhibition of Japanese artist Izumi Kato at Charleston in Firle presents a vivid and otherworldly body of work that explores the human, the spiritual, and the alien. Living and working between Tokyo and Hong Kong, Kato is renowned for his brightly coloured, enigmatic figures in painting and sculpture, which combine childlike innocence with a mysterious, unsettling presence. His work probes existence, transformation, and the boundaries between the visible and invisible worlds.
Date: 20 September 2025 – 4 January 2026. Location: Charleston, Firle, East Sussex BN8 6LL. Price: £12 / £10 concessions, free for under 18s and members. Book now
Liliane Lijn: Arise Alive
Liliane Lijn, Conjunction of Opposites: Woman of War and Lady of the Wild Things 1986. Courtesy the artist and Sylvia Kouvali, London / Piraeus. © Liliane Lijn / DACS 2024. Photograph: Thierry Bal
#FLODown: Arise Alive is a major survey of Liliane Lijn’s five-decade career, celebrating her pioneering contributions to kinetic art through sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, collage, video and performance. The exhibition highlights her investigations into motorisation and optical effects, the visible forces of light and energy, and the intersections of feminism and the body, challenging traditional ideas of femininity in art and technology. It features early sky-inspired drawings, experimental polymer sculptures, her kinetic Poem Machines, and large-scale works such as the Koans and Prism Stones. Lijn’s practice merges art, science, mythology and feminism.
Date: 24 May – 2 November 2025. Location: Tate St Ives, Porthmeor Beach, St Ives TR26 1TG.Price: £14. Concessions available. Book now
Reflections – Sangat and the Self
Jasmir Creed, Transcience, 2024, oil on canvas, 250 x 150 cm
#FLODown: Reflections – Sangat and the Self will open in September at without SHAPE without FORM’s new 7,500 sq ft Slough space, a former Citroën showroom. Featuring Jasmir Creed and Roo Dhissou, the exhibition presents works that draw on personal and cultural experience to explore identity, kinship, and healing. Creed will show over 20 figurative paintings reflecting the experiences of British South Asian women, while Dhissou’s A String of Love (2025) and her sculptural pavilion Heal, Home, Hmmm, made from HS2 clay using traditional mud-building techniques, address care, access, and environmental responsibility. Guided by the gallery’s ethos, the show reflects on mental well-being, social connection, and collective resilience, before touring to The Whitworth in 2026.
Date: 19 September 2025 – 2 May 2026. Location: Unit 4, The Brickyard, Windsor Road, Slough, SL1 2EY. withoutshapewithoutform.com
