7 Exhibitions to See in London During Frieze Week

As part of this year’s Frieze Week, Ryan Gander opens “I’ve Fallen Foul of My Desire,” a new solo exhibition curated by filmmaker Hala Matar. Presented at Camden Art Projects, the show brings Gander’s trademark blend of wit and observation to a series of sculptures and installations.

The artist—who lives with a form of muscular dystrophy—demonstrates a subtle but razor-sharp ability to communicate his physical experience within the city, loading his work with humor, vulnerability, and precision. Beyond the Camden show, Gander’s presence extends across London: monumental inflatable sculptures will animate the courtyard at Lisson Gallery, while in Elephant Park in the south, his permanent commission has been shortlisted for this year’s Public Sculpture Award.

Taken together, these projects reveal an artist at the top of his game, thinking expansively about movement, impulse, and play within the urban environment.

“Unveiled Desires” offers a more intimate counterpoint to the large-scale institutional shows dominating Frieze Week. The exhibition traces the entwined histories of fetishism, eroticism, and Surrealism—from fin de siècle symbolism to contemporary art—with works on view by Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Louise Bourgeois, and Renate Bertlmann.

Saltoun has long been an advocate for overlooked artists—particularly women—who worked in obscurity during their lifetimes, many from behind the Iron Curtain. That commitment feels especially relevant now, as collectors and institutions turn away from ultra-contemporary trends toward rediscovering alternative canons. The show may be thrilling, but it’s underpinned by Saltoun’s curatorial mission and a broader market shift—one that mines the unearthed past as a source for new experiences.

In West London’s stately Ladbroke Hall, “Rust Never Sleeps” finds fashion designer Rick Owens turning to sculptural furniture and the aesthetics of decay. Curated by his wife and creative partner, the ever-understated Michèle Lamy, the exhibition draws inspiration from London’s Brutalist architecture. Beds, tables, and chairs in metal, alabaster, and resin balance severity with refinement, their tensile strength eroded by time.

Owens blurs the boundaries between utility and sculpture, design and performance. The title—a Neil Young reference—evokes the inevitability of transformation, reminding us that even the most monumental forms, and the bodies we inhabit, are subject to entropy. At the opening, Lamy, now 81, hosted a night of deconstructed lasagna, black mezcal martinis, and rooms bathed in red light and reverberating with electro.

Just a short walk from Frieze London, Italian gallerist Alice Amati—a new presence in the city’s ecosystem—presents “Tablescapes,” the second solo exhibition by American painter Danielle Fretwell. These richly symbolic still lifes transform simple arrangements of fruit, glass, and linen into strange palimpsests. Fretwell combines oil paint and printmaking, pressing pigment-dipped linens against canvas to create ghostly traces of what once rested there.

Amati represents a new generation of London gallerists catering to younger, globally minded collectors—many shaped by technology and finance rather than family fortune—who are attuned to untested voices in contemporary painting. Her program reflects this shift: serious and conceptually engaged yet accessible to the new buyers poised to reshape the city’s market from the ground up.

In East London, Maureen Paley’s renovated gallery at 4 Herald Street opens just in time for Frieze with “Build From Here,” featuring recent photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans—still lifes, portraits, and abstractions marked by his hyperreal familiarity. The show marks a moment of triumph for Paley, underscoring her continuity and capacity for renewal—she first showed Tillmans in the 1990s.

The building’s history enriches the presentation: once part of Tillmans’s own London studio, the space carries traces of his past while offering a platform for new work by a generation he has so deeply inspired. In an age defined by impermanence and fleeting attention, “Build From Here” invites viewers to consider the value of relationships built on trust and time.

For visitors seeking a reprieve from Frieze’s commercial noise, Peter Doig’s “House of Music” at the Serpentine in Hyde Park offers an escape. The artist turns his long-standing engagement with sound into a multisensory meditation—especially for those never happier than when buying vinyl. Alongside recent paintings, Doig has assembled restored analog speakers, turntables, and recordings to create an environment that blurs the line between artist studio and record shop.

Doig’s interest in atmosphere—both visual and aural—suggests that painting can operate like music: through tone, repetition, and mood. It’s an exhibition that rewards those willing to turn off Instagram, tune out, and linger.