How To Do Frieze Week, The Vogue Way

It’s Frieze-ing, with the arrival of real coat weather and the first tumble of crisp leaves heralding the emergence of two marquees on opposite sides of Regent’s Park, as if by magic. Between them, they host two of the art world’s biggest potential shopping sprees. On the Great Portland Street side, Frieze London, a directionally curated buffet of contemporary art, served up by industry-propping mega-galleries and precocious, scene-steering indies alike. Up towards Camden, Frieze Masters spans the breadth and complexity of art history, from antiquities through Old Masters to queer Modernist masterpieces. Here’s how to navigate the marathon that lies ahead, the Vogue way.

What must I see in the main tents?

Know that going in blind can be a woefully inefficient – not to mention tiring – approach. Instead, take a look through the full programme and anchor your day around a couple of stand-outs. In Frieze London’s main section, mine include Ajamu X’s new photographs at Amanda Wilkinson; Sadie Coles HQ’s mega line-up (including a 3.5 metre tall Alex Da Corte sculpture and works by Tau Lewis and Karimah Ashadu); Sam Lipp and Maren Karlson’s paintings at Soft Opening, and a lucid dream of a Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings painting on show at Arcadia Missa.

Over in the Tiffany & Co.-sponsored Artist-to-Artist section, which hosts solo projects by emerging artists nominated by established names, I’ll be making a beeline for Brazilian interdisciplinarian Jota Mombaça’s presentation, as nominated by Otobong Nkanga. At Focus, the section dedicated to platforming rising galleries, Okiki Akinfe’s solo booth at Ginny on Frederick; Amanda Moström’s goatskin-clad everyday objects at Rose Easton; Benjamin Lallier’s sombre installation at London newcomer Heidi, and Ryan Huggins’s recreation of a “porno booth” from a decaying German sex cinema at a.Squire are all at top of my list. Don’t miss the gender-neutral public toilets, which this year have been transformed into “an intimate olfactory experience” by Gray Wielebinski.

Daniel Rodgers, British Vogue’s senior fashion news editor, tells me he’ll be heading straight for Frieze Masters. “The guests are, on average, at least 20 years older and the work spans millennia of art history. Last year I saw an early Rubens, a Cretaceous-era sub-adult triceratops skull, and a lovely wooden cabinet.” Funmi Fetto, British Vogue’s beauty and wellness director, “can’t wait to see what [director] Emanuela Tarizzo has done for Frieze Masters”, she says, citing a Paula Rego painting on show at Piano Nobile’s booth among her highlights, as well as Grayson Perry’s scheduled talk. “He is always so brilliant and entertaining.”

What’s on beyond them?

On the official Frieze programme

“My advice for Frieze Week is to broaden your horizons beyond the tent,” remarks Olivia Allen, British Vogue’s fashion writer. (Here are 18 shows worth checking off your list for starters.)

At No 9 Cork Street, Frieze’s permanent space in the heart of Mayfair, shows open during the week include Jordan Nassar’s geometric panels featuring intricate Palestinian tatreez embroidery, presented by Dubai-based The Third Line, and Robin F Williams’s paintings and works on paper, presented by New York-based P.P.O.W. Over the weekend, you’ll also find a brilliant photography show presented in collaboration with Mr & Mrs Smith. Curated by the National Portrait Gallery’s Brandei Estes – the show convenes images by Tina Barney, Isabelle Young, Kalpesh Lathigra and the late, great Martin Parr, among others, that illustrate how individual creative perspectives shape broader perceptions of places. At the ICA, Frieze’s film programme features a work by Yuyan Wang, perhaps my favourite video artist right now. Her film Boring Billion, a found-footage montage exploring a robotic deep-dream of biological agency, is currently on show in a church crypt in Shoreditch as part of her debut solo show at east London gallery Emalin.

The other fairs

There’s Minor Attractions, which sees over 70 international galleries take up residence at The Newman hotel in Fitzrovia; the boutique London Invitational, which comprises a tight edit of galleries including London’s Vardaxoglou and Mexico City’s Lomex across a floor of The Chancery Rosewood; and 1-54, the place to see the best art coming out of Africa and its global diaspora, held yearly at Somerset House.

For British Vogue’s fashion and jewellery editor Laura Hawkins, however, it’s all about PAD. “Not only does it play host to a gamut of global design galleries, it also showcases the wares of a dazzling range of high jewellers, including materiality-focused Cologne-based Hemmerle, Greek jeweller Nikos Koulis, and Italian goldsmithing pioneers Buccellati,” she says. “Special mentions also go to London’s own Fernando Jorge and Glenn Spiro.”

Shows to see in central

The Mount Street Neighbourhood Arts Festival will incorporate a breakfast talks series hosted by Charlene Prempeh and Lewis Dalton Gilbert of A Vibe Called Tech, a Hauser & Wirth Publishers pop-up, and an ephemeral studio by acclaimed photographer Miles Aldridge, who’ll be bringing his Polaroid portrait project, 15 Minutes of Fame to the public. Book in for very own your cover girl moment here.

From Tarek Ataoui’s transformation of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall to painter Justin Caguiat’s hotly-tipped solo show at Serpentine South Gallery; Robert Ryman’s starkly moving Barbican exhibition to wunderkind painter Issy Wood’s big moment at the National Portrait Gallery (not to mention the presentation of the literal Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum), London’s institutions boast a line-up of knockout new openings.

As do it’s stores. The highlight of this year’s Frieze week activations at Dover Street Market is without doubt its ground floor installation and window display of images from SIX, the Rei Kawakubo-edited magazine that – over its eight-issue run across the late ’80s and early ’90s – featured works by artists and imagemakers including Peter Lindbergh, Eileen Gray and Jean Cocteau. Meanwhile in Pimlico, JW Anderson transforms his latest store into a group show featuring works by artists in the brand’s orbit, including Cerith Wyn Evans and Mary Stephenson.

Reasons to head east

St Chads Projects presents a film installation by Mark Leckey and a fuzzy-tailed Nicole Wermers sculpture across its two King’s Cross spaces. Close by in Angel, The Soothsayer’s Chorus, curated by Beth Greenacre and Bettina Prentice, brings together a punchy, intergenerational line-up of women artists whose practices explore intuition, ancestral memory and the articulation of speculative futures – Ana Mendieta (whose current Tate Modern retrospective is another must), Judy Chicago, Veronica Ryan and Clementine Keith-Roach among them.

Sung Tieu’s patina-ed marble mosaics of graffiti-ed East German housing estate walls, on show at Emalin’s new Helmet Row space, are well worth an in-person viewing. And 1014 Gallery’s show of Vincent Wechselberger’s handprints, documenting the hedonism and tenderness that has coloured a decade of the photographer’s life in Berlin, is reason enough for a Dalston detour. For Olivia Allen, the second rotation of Ana Viktoria Dzinic’s solo at Nicoletti in Shoreditch – which coincides with a solo booth over at Frieze London – is a must. She’ll also be stopping by Neven Gallery, where Adam Lewis Jacob has “dismantled and reconfigured greying marabou slippers into strange emblems of faded glamour”.

I’m all art-ed out… where’s the best martini?

There are places to unwind within the tents themselves – at Frieze London, the promise of a plate of burrata, pumpkin, figs and fines herbes, a coupe of Ruinart Blanc des Blancs and a good gossip on the terrace at the Maison François pop-up is one of my main motivators. Funmi Fetto, meanwhile, will be posted up at Jikoni once she’s done the rounds.

If a stop at the Serpentine is on the cards, then The Aubrey, Mandarin Oriental Knightsbridge’s très recherché izakaya, is an obvious option – especially given the 20% discount for anyone presenting a Frieze pass. For a more discreet drink, The Emory’s rooftop bar – which boasts one of the best city views in town – has Argentinian-inspired riffs on classic cocktails, and, moreover, feels a bit like you’re kicking back on the covered deck of a very tasteful billionaire’s superyacht.

Toast your PAD purchases over perfect martinis at Brutes of Mayfair, while Bar Finch and Dorothy’s both promise art-world power-player spotting as well as leisurely aperitivo vibes in W1. For something more substantial than a liquid lunch, look no further than Mount St. Restaurant, owned by Artfarm, the hospitality company founded by Ivan and Manuela Wirth – the couple of Hauser & Wirth renown. Where else can you season your beef wellington with “suggestive” Paul McCarthy cruets, or sip stilton martinis while losing yourself in an Auerbach landscape? Right now, its serving a menu that lifts from A Cookbook For Iwan, a compilation of recipes from the mega-gallery’s family of contemporary artists, curators, chefs and collectors.

If you’re on The Strand – whether for 1-54, Salman Toor’s spellbinding European debut at The Courtauld, or Jenkin van Zyl’s solo exhibition at Somerset House – Toklas is a longstanding favourite. Just around the corner is a new one: St Clement. Now’s an especially good time to go, with Bobbi’s Bar – the new hotel’s late-night watering hole – hosting Il Pellicano (of Dua Lipa’s honeymoon fame) for perhaps the chicest hospitality residency of Frieze week.

In Farringdon, Sessions Arts Club asserts its art world kudos with an exhibition of Özgur Kar’s skeletal animations and drawings installed along its elegantly weathered walls. There’s something to be said for keeping to routine, though. Accordingly, Olivia Allen will be taking up residence at a patio table at Vesper at every opportunity: “The perfect place for fuelling up on raw tuna and scallion pancakes with a dirty Negroni or three while people watching.”