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Are you healthy, robust and capable of staggering feats of endurance? Well, if you want to take on October’s insane number of exhibitions and art events, you’ll have to be in the shape of your life, because next month is a cultural ultra-marathon that’ll test even the fittest of art-thletes. Pretty much every museum is opening a big exhibition next month, as is every single gallery, all to coincide with Frieze. So here, we’ve compiled the best shows at London’s major institutions, the headline acts that you can’t afford to miss.
12 unmissable London art exhibitions and events in October 2024
Mike Kelley: ‘Ghost and Spirit’ at Tate Modern
In a dizzying collision of sculptural installations, found objects, performance and sound work, American artist Mike Kelley (1954-2012) tore apart ideas of America and youth. The results are often disconcerting, filled with stuffed toys and grime, but always about something essential, important, underground, powerful. This is art for the punks, the hobos and the freaks, so you normies better beware.
Mike Kelley is at Tate Modern, Oct 2 2024-Mar 9 2025. More details here.
Lygia Clark and Sonia Boyce at Whitechapel Gallery
Forget boring old paintings on walls and sculptures on plinths, leading Brazilian modernist Lygia Clark wanted viewers to get properly involved in her art, to become active participants. That’s what this Whitechapel show is all about: her attempts to reduce the gap between the work and the viewer. Occurring at the same time, British artist Sonia Boyce’s show will be ‘in dialogue’ with Clark’s, exploring themes of influence, communication and synergy across generational and international divides.
Lygia Clark: ‘The I and the You’ and Sonia Boyce: ‘An Awkward Relation’ are at Whitechapel Gallery, Oct 2 2024-Jan 12 2025. More details here.
‘Chronoplasticity’ at Raven Row
I genuinely don’t have the foggiest inklings of an iota of an idea of what Raven Row’s next exhibition is about. Apparently it’s about time, and will ask you to ‘consider new conceptions of the ‘historical’, connecting the no-longer to the not-yet.’ What we do know is that it’s a group show curated by theorist Lars Bang Larsen with art tackling ideas of clairvoyance, fascism, ‘trans poetics’, craft and ‘colonial expropriation’. There’s also another group show on the top floor which is both separate and connected. Honestly, sounds like the kind of brilliant, unintelligible nonsense that only Raven Row can pull off.
‘Chronoplasticity’ is at Raven Row, Oct 3-Dec 8. Free. More details here.
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst: ‘The Call’
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst are artists at the forefront of AI-experimentation. ‘The Call’ will see them creating voices out of data collection and AI model-training, exploring the idea of the choir as an ancient form of primal human cooperation.
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst: ‘The Call’ is at the Serpentine, Oct 3-Feb 2 2025. Free. More details here.
Sammy Baloji at Goldsmith’s CCA.
Exploring themes of exploitation and historical injustices, Sammy Baloji’s films and installations at GCCA (the first there since it was closed down by Pro-Palestine protests at the university) will look at how ecological disaster and capitalist greed help perpetuate colonialism.
Sammy Baloji is at GCCA Oct 4-Jan 12 2025. Free. More details here.
Jack O’Brien: ‘The Reward’ at Camden Art Centre
Young London-based artist Jack O’Brien won the Emerging Artist prize at last year’s Frieze, and that means he’s been rewarded with a solo exhibition at Camden Art Centre. The work that got everyone’s attention last October was a horse racing carriage wrapped in clingfilm-like polythene, and there’ll be more of that in this show. O’brien’s signature wrap move ‘submits [objects] to a kind of restraint that accentuates their outer form whilst withholding full legibility’. And also keeps them nice and fresh, which is a bonus.
Jack O’Brien: ‘The Reward’ is at Camden Art Centre, Oct 4-Dec 29. Free. More details here.
‘The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998’ at the Barbican
25 Indian artists are being brought together for this exploration of art, love, friendship and society in a time of massive turbulence and upheaval. The period of 1975-1998 saw India go through untold changes, and these artists were there to document and react to all of it.
‘The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998’ is at the Barbican, Oct 5-Jan 5 2025. More details here.
Mire Lee at Tate Modern
The next artist to take on the daunting task of filling the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern is gory sculptural experimenter Mire Lee. By combining plastic, metal, goo, textiles and kinetic elements, Lee messes with ideas of cleanliness, safety, technology and the body, creating, wobbly, weird, moving sculptures that will hopefully creep Londoners out for months to come.
Mire Lee is at Tate Modern, Oct 9-Mar 15 2025. Free. More details here.
Frieze and Frieze Masters
Frieze, London’s biggest art fair, and Frieze Masters, its more refined sibling, return once again, whacking up a couple of marquees in Regent’s Park and welcoming all the biggest artists, galleries, collectors, curators and art hangers-on in the world. Our guide should help you figure out if watching people in the ugliest trousers ever try to buy insanely expensive paintings is for you (it is, it’s very funny).
Frieze and Frieze Masters are at Regent’s Park, Oct 9-13. More details here.
Haegue Yang: 'Leap Year'
Expect 'sensorial installations' and 'performative sculpture' in this major show by South Korean artist Haegue Yang, featuring work from throughout their career. Domestic items get transformed, folk traditions get morphed and politics get twisted into mind-bending immersive artworks. This show will see the world premiere of 'large-scale Venetian blind installation' which will almost certainly be more exciting than it sounds.
Haegue Yang: 'Leap Year' is at the Hayward Gallery, Oct -Jan 5 2025. More details here.
‘Francis Bacon Portraits’ at the National Portrait Gallery
Can you ever have too much Bacon? My cardiologist thinks so, but the National Portrait Gallery heartily disagrees. So get ready to gorge yourself on Francis Bacon’s finest portraiture in this big ambitious blockbuster show of, you know, his portraiture. Could most of his work be considered portraiture? Yes, probably, but don’t let that stop you from getting your fill.
‘Francis Bacon Portraits’ is at the National Portrait Gallery, Oct 10 2024-Jan 19 2025. More details here.
Hew Locke: ‘What Have We Here’ at the British Museum
Hew Locke’s last outing in a big London art institution saw him fill Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries with a raucous, kaleidoscopic carnival. Now he’s turning his colourful, critical eye on the British Museum’s collection, for a major new exhibition exploring the complex, often shocking stories of imperialism and colonialism told by the museum’s objects.
Hew Locke: ‘What Have We Here’ is at the British Museum, Oct 17-Feb 9 2025. £12. More details here.
Can't wait? Jeez, just go to one of the top ten exhibitions in London instead.