Frieze 2023 at Cork Street

Cork Street Galleries is thrilled once again to announce its annual Frieze week programme, highlighting exhibitions, extended opening hours, and special events that will take place on the art world’s most celebrated street during Frieze London and Frieze Masters, Wednesday 11 – Sunday 15 October 2023.

All of the galleries on Cork Street will open their doors on Frieze West End Night, Thursday 12 October (18:00 – 20:00), welcoming the evening’s crowd with special events, music, food and drink.

The street’s permanent roster of galleries, including No.9 Cork Street, Alison Jacques, Flowers Gallery, Goodman Gallery, Holtermann Fine Art, The Mayor Gallery, Messums London, The Redfern Gallery, Stephen Friedman, Tiwani Contemporary, and Waddington Custot have announced exhibitions celebrating the busiest and most exciting week in London’s art calendar.

Frieze No.9 Cork Street (9 Cork Street) is pleased to present its Frieze programme, welcoming a series of participating galleries from across the globe, including Sullivan+Strumpf (Sydney, Melbourne), Night Gallery (Los Angeles), and Charles Moffett (New York).

Gallery 1: Sullivan+Strumpf is pleased to present ‘Story, Place’, a group exhibition conceived by renowned Australian artist Tony Albert and curator Jenn Ellis. Bringing together a group of preeminent contemporary artists from around the globe, ‘Story, Place’ is a collective consideration of creation, resilience, and regenerative spirit. This exhibition presents a powerful dialogue of Indigenous and diasporic voices, each exploring land, ancestry, and belief within the contemporary context of Frieze London. Participating artists will include Tony Albert, Shiraz Bayjoo, Edgar Calel, Gunybi Ganambarr, Lindy Lee, Naminapu Maymuru-White; Angela Tiatia, Jemima Wyman.

Gallery 2: Night Gallery (Los Angeles) is pleased to present ‘Eclipse’, an exhibition of new paintings by Wanda Koop. This will be the artist’s first solo show in London and will highlight motifs which have recurred throughout her storied, more than four-decade-long career. Koop makes uncanny paintings that reinvigorate landscape traditions with bold, surreal interventions. Often inspired by her dreams, the compositions rely on mood and the unconscious to explore very real, contemporary ecological concerns.The artist has shown in over 50 exhibitions internationally and Night Gallery is excited to bring her work to a new audience.

Gallery 3: Charles Moffett (New York) is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by New York-based artist Kenny Rivero at No.9 Cork Street, entitled ‘This, That, and The Third Eye’. This marks the first presentation of the artist’s work in the U.K. and his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Rivero’s work, which spans paintings, collage, drawings, and sculpture, explores the complexity of identity through narrative images, language, and symbolism. Born in Washington Heights to Dominican parents and now based in the Bronx, Rivero’s aim is to deconstruct the histories and identities he has been raised to understand as absolute and to re-engineer them into new wholes, with new functions and new stories. His creative process allows him to explore what he perceives as the broken narrative of Dominican American identity, socio-geographic solidarity, familial expectations, race, and gender roles.

The exhibitions run concurrently from 6 October – 21 October 2023.

Sheila Hicks, Roaring Declaration of Passivity, 2023, linen mounted on wood support, 70 x 70 cm. Courtesy: Alison Jacques, London / Sheila Hicks. Photo: Michael Brzezinski

Alison Jacques (22 Cork Street) presents ‘Sheila Hicks: Infinite Potential’, the inaugural exhibition of its new Mayfair gallery space. Sheila Hicks first exhibited in London in 1965 and had her first major UK survey show at the Hepworth Wakefield in 2022 curated by Andrew Bonacina. This exhibition will be the artist’s fourth solo show with the gallery.

‘Infinite Potential’ follows Hicks’ recent critically celebrated exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou Malaga (2023) and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2023). The exhibition will survey both historical and new works whilst Hicks will create a new site-specific installation that echoes earlier monumental environments at venues including the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018), 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and Glasgow International (2016). For the exhibition Hicks will also make new lianes; vine-like sculptures that tumble down walls like psychedelic waterfalls, and new diaristic minimes; minimal works that have been a constant through her practice.

The exhibition runs from 6 October – 18 November 2023.

Aida Tomescu, Chartres, 2023, oil on Belgian linen, 200x153cm. Copywright: Aida Tomescu. Courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Flowers Gallery (21 Cork Street) presents an exhibition by Sydney-based artist Aida Tomescu, her first solo exhibition in the UK. One of Australia’s foremost abstract painters, Aida Tomescu’s career has spanned over 40 years. Her works combine a vital physical presence with a powerful handling of scale, to create what she describes as “living structures”, self-forming from within.

The exhibition runs from 4 October – 28 October 2023.

Shirin Neshat, The Fury, 2022, HD video monochrome, Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, London

Goodman Gallery (26 Cork Street) Goodman Gallery presents an exhibition of Shirin Neshat’s most recent work, ‘The Fury’, which comprises a double-channel video installation and a series of black and white photographs. Shot in June 2022, The Fury captures the zeitgeist foreboding sense of doom and the dread of witnessing the possibility of the rise of fascism once again. While ‘The Fury’ can be viewed as the continuation of Neshat’s exploration of the female body in the context of theocratic politics and gender apartheid of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its consequential unfolding in New York City drives home its international charge. Fury, the video installation references two classic cinematic works of the post-war era, Pasolini’s Salo and Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, to warn viewers against, therefore, a reductionist identity reading.

The exhibition runs from 7 October – 11 November 2023.

Nick Cave, Chain Reaction, 2022-23. Copyright: the artist. Photo: Ossip van Duivenbode

Holtermann Fine Art (30 Cork Street), is delighted to present ‘Nick Cave: Power & Cycles’, the artist’s first gallery exhibition in London. Born 1959 in Fulton, Missouri, the artist’s illustrious career includes his recent survey show ‘Forothermore’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York. The politics of the human body lies at the beating heart of Cave’s sculptural imagination and the sculptures in ‘Nick Cave: Power & Cycles’ offer a compelling insight into the artist’s present work.

At the centre of the display hangs a striking new work called Chain Reaction. This 4-metre-tall multipartite sculpture comprises 15 suspended chains – resin casts of interlocking arms and wrists, taken from the artist’s own body, hung in concentric circles in the gallery.

Also on view will be a new Tondo – a large wall-hanging sculpture made with brightly coloured wire, bugle beads and sequins. The work is a powerful metaphor for present-day environmental and social crises while Arm Peace, a work with tole flowers offers a gesture of defiance, remembrance, and love.

The exhibition runs from 5 October – 25 November.

Sue Dunkley, ‘Bikini Nudes’, 1973, oil on canvas, 183 x 153 cm, 71 7/8 x 60 inches

The Mayor Gallery (21 Cork Street) presents the vibrant Pop Art paintings from the 60s and 70s by British artist Sue Dunkley (b. 1942 Leicester – d. 2022 London, UK). Born to publican parents Dunkley moved around frequently when young, before studying at Bath Academy of Art (1959-61), Chelsea (1961-63) and the Slade, winning scholarships to visit Australia and Italy, and began teaching at art schools shortly after graduating in 1965.

The exhibition runs from 21 September – 3 November 2023.

Stone Cracker, Marchmont 2022 – Charlie Poulsen. Image: the artist

Messums London (28 Cork Street) presents a body of drawings and studies by landscape artist Charlie Poulsen, including a suite of recent abstract drawings, both large and small scale, realised in layers of pencil, wax and gouache.

Charles Poulsen was born in Kent in 1952. He trained in Fine Art, specialising in sculpture, at Loughborough College of Art (BA Hons) and Nottingham Trent University (MA Fine Art, 1986). Since 1993, he and his wife, textile artist Pauline Burbidge, have lived and worked in the Scottish Borders.

The exhibition runs from 20 September – 13 October 2023.

Sarah Armstrong-Jones, Red Studio, Spring 2023, oil on canvas, 102 x 127 cm. Credit: Sarah Armstrong-Jones. Courtesy of The Redfern Gallery

The Redfern Gallery (20 Cork Street) presents ‘Centenary Exhibition: Part 2 – The Red Studio’, a group exhibition featuring work by gallery artists Sarah Armstrong-Jones, Elizabeth Butterworth, John Carter RA, Elliot Paul Emsley, Susannah Fiennes, Annabel Gault, Florence Hutchings, David Inshaw, Linda Karshan, Catherine Kurtz, Ffiona Lewis, Danny Markey, Desmond Morris, Brendan Neiland, Bryan Organ, Dave Oxtoby, Pierre Skira, Telfer Stokes, and David Tindle RA.

It was at The Redfern Gallery in 1943, where Patrick Heron first saw Matisse’s The Red Studio, which he described as “a life-changing experience… the single most influential painting in my entire career.”

The narrative of how this celebrated Matisse painting was for a time during WW2 hanging downstairs at The Redfern Gallery, has attained the status of legend.

Forming the second part of its centenary celebrations, the gallery invited its artists to respond to this iconic 20th Century masterpiece.

The exhibition continues until 27 October 2023.

Pattern detail from Hybrid Mask (Nwantantay), 2023. Copyright Yinka Shonibare CBE RA. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Stephen Friedman Gallery (5-6 Cork Street) presents ‘Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun’, a new exhibition by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE RA – the first to take place at the gallery’s new London home on Cork Street. Having joined in 1996, Shonibare is one of the gallery’s longest represented artists.

The exhibition includes a group presentation of African artists, and artists from the African diaspora, curated by Shonibare. Some of these artists participated in Shonibare’s residency program at Guest Artist Space Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria. Paintings, sculptures, mixed media pieces and works on paper are exhibited.

The exhibition runs from 6 October – 11 November 2023.

Joy Labinjo, Enjoyment, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary

Tiwani Contemporary (24 Cork Street) is pleased to announce its Cork Street gallery’s inaugural exhibition, ‘Joy Labinjo: Beloved, Take What You Need’. This new body of work focuses on everyday Black life, and reflects the personal and professional changes Labinjo has been through in the five years since Tiwani Contemporary first presented her work. Featuring intimate scenes, and exploring themes of love, relationships, and family dynamics, Labinjo’s large-scale figurative paintings present fresh and arresting compositions of colour and explore multiple modes of representation including abstraction, naturalism, and flatness. Drawing inspiration from found images and her own personal photographs, the suite of paintings demonstrate Joy Labinjo’s maturing practice.

The exhibition runs from 12 October – 11 November 2023.

Ian Davenport, Mirrored Blue (after Perugino), 2022, acrylic on aluminium mounted onto aluminium panel, 60 x 50 cm / 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 in. Courtesy of the artist

Waddington Custot (11-12 Cork Street) presents a new exhibition by British painter Ian Davenport (b. 1966, Sidcup, Kent) which will include the artist’s largest ever wall to floor installation, alongside new and recent work. An immense painting installed in the heart of the gallery, Lake features lines of poured paint which flow down the length of one wall, and into a pool of colour that extends over eight metres across the gallery floor. For the first time, visitors have the opportunity to step directly into the work as they move through the space and become immersed within it.

The exhibition runs from 3 October – 11 November 2023.